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THE IRISH CASE 

Before the Court of 
Public Opinion 



BY 

P. WHITWELL WILSON 

Special Correspondent or 
The London Daily News 




New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1920 by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 






C1A570709 ' 



i 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 

4 



/Vi 



FOREWORD 

THIS book has been written at the 
urgent request of numerous Ameri- 
can Citizens who have heard me 
speak upon Ireland. Numbers of these Ameri- 
can Citizens tell me that they want to know 
the facts about Ireland but do not know where 
to find them. And they ask me why I do not 
write the facts for the press in the United 
States. I tell them that I was asked to do this 
by a leading agency and that in response I 
supplied the material, with figures and statis- 
tics. The agency circulated the articles, and if 
only a few journals printed what I had to say, 
I can scarcely be blamed for that! 

I happened to call on an editor and saw my 
work reposing in his waste paper basket. We 
had a hearty laugh over the matter and he 
explained to me that the best plan at these 
political seasons is to leave the Irish severely 
alone. The whole business was simply politics 
3 



4 FOREWORD 

and the less said about it the better. I am 
sure that my friend was wholly sincere in his 
desire for good relations between his country 
and mine, but of course his theory means 
in effect that much may be said against 
Britain without being answered. To give my 
editorial friend his due, I must add that his 
practice has been often broader minded than 
his preaching. But the Ulster Deputation, 
when over here, left with a sense that they had 
not been given a full hearing in print. I do 
not know whether they were right or wrong. 
One New York daily gave them a good half 
page in the Sunday Edition and there were 
doubtless others. But their general complaint 
is on record. On the other hand, I have just 
had in my office a Sinn Feiner, a most delight- 
ful personal friend, who says that the news- 
papers are very unfair to De Valera, men- 
tioning him as little as possible ! He felt this 
to be a distinct grievance. 

One little incident may perhaps be worth re- 
calling. During the War, the American 
Y. M. C. A. issued a book or pamphlet for the 
American Army telling the troops what had 



FOREWORD 5 

been accomplished by the British Forces. The 
object w^€, I take it, to help the soldiers to 
realise the situation in Britain where many of 
them would be stationed. In crossing the At- 
lantic in a boat full of "Y" workers, I was 
asked to give addresses on the same lines, as 
few of these crusaders had ever seen Europe. 
What happened? An attempt was made by 
direct appeal to Mr. Newton D. Baker to have 
the book suppressed by military order. In a 
letter to the State Department, Mr. Joseph C. 
Pelletier, District Attorney of Boston, makes 
onslaught on Dr. John R. Mott and compli- 
ments my own country in this vivacious 
fashion: 

Your Honor — that is Mr. Baker — 
knows full well the interpretation which 
our Doughboys gave the initials "A. E. 
F."_"After England Failed." 



Again: 



God preserve us from England's treat- 
ment of labour, of the poor, of the sick. 



6 FOREWORD 

Again: 

We need no French, no English, no 
ItaHan propaganda to stimulate us to just 
regard for your European brethren. The 
American people want facts. 

This, I confess, interested me very much. 
Anything a Frenchman or an Italian or an 
Englishman may say in the United States is 
"propaganda." But anything about the Irish 
Republic is "facts." 

This monopoly claimed for anti-British 
writing is of course repudiated with indigna- 
tion by the more reputable journals throughout 
the United States. It is, however, sufficiently 
serious to warrant a word of genial warning 
before things drift any further. This morn- 
ing, I have cabled to Britain the information 
contained in the following announcement: 

ASKS PRESIDENT TO RECEIVE 
IRISH ENVOY 

Special to The New York Times 
Washington, May 6. — Representative 
James A. Hammill of New Jersey offered 



FOREWORD 7 

to-day in the House of Representatives a 
joint resolution seeking to have Congress 
"suggest" to President Wilson that he 
refuse to receive Sir Auckland Geddes 
as "Ireland's diplomatic representative." 
The resolution suggests that the President 
receive, instead, Dr. Patrick McCarton, 
"the Minister named by the duly elected 
Government of the Republic of Ireland." 
No action was taken on the resolution, 
which was referred to committee. The 
Hammill resolution read: 

"Whereas, Sir Auckland Geddes Is about 
to present his credentials as Ambassador 
from Great Britain and Ireland to the 
United States; and, 

"Whereas, the President of the United 
States, in Paris, on January 20, 19 19, 
said, 'we are here to see that every people 
shall govern themselves, not as we wish, 
but as they wish' ; and, 

"Whereas, the people of Ireland, in 
December, 1918, by a vote of 3 to i, 
elected to live under a republican form of 
government; and. 



8 FOREWORD 

Whereas, the Senate of the United 
States, on March i6, 1920, reaffirmed its 
allegiance to the principle of self de- 
termination and applied that principle di- 
rectly to the Republic of Ireland in the 
Gerry reservation; 

"Now, therefore, be it resolved. That 
the Congress of the United States respect- 
fully suggest to the President of the 
United States that, in consonance with 
America's repeated declaration of prin- 
ciples during the World War, he refuse 
to receive the said Sir Auckland Geddes 
as Ireland's diplomatic representative, but 
receive, instead Dr. Patrick McCarton, 
the Minister named by the duly-elected 
Government of the Republic of Ireland." 

Now let us get right away from all camou- 
flage and excuses in this business. This reso- 
lution, introduced seriously into Congress, 
means neither more nor less than a proposal 
to let a second British Ambassador go home 
without presenting his credentials. In other 
words, it is a demand in Congress for the 



FOREWORD 9 

severance of diplomatic relations between the 
(United States and the United Kingdom, with 
all that this implies. 

In view of this resolution and of what I 
must call the candid handling of British af- 
fairs which has preceded it, Americans them- 
selves have desired this book. They feel that 
to tear apart the English speaking nations at 
this grave moment in the history of the world 
is simply incendiarism over an uncovered pow- 
der magazine. 

Certain of the features in the Appendix are 
taken with permission from Current History. 
Also Cartoons are included by courtesy of the 
New York Tribune and Life. To these pub- 
lications I tender my acknowledgments. 



CONTENTS 



Foreword 

I. The Grievances of Ireland 

II. Is Ireland Plundered? , . 

III. The Verdict of Ulster 

IV. The Fight for Home Rule 
V. The Lloyd George Settlement 

VI. Is Independence Conceivable? 

VII. Irish Propaganda in the United 
States 



PAGE 

3 

13 

19 

39 

37 
56 
65 



90 

VIII. The Disorders in Ireland . . . 103 
IX. The Argument on Secession . . .110 

Appendices 

a. The Home Rule Bill — Summary 

OF its Provisions .... 133 

b. Mr. Lloyd George's Statement 143 

c. Ex-Premier Asquith's Criticisms 151 

d. Mr. Bonar Law's Reply . . .155 

II 



THE GRIEVANCES OF IRELAND 

THE citizens of the United States are 
to-day gel f -constituted into a jury of 
one hundred million persons, sitting 
in solemn judgment on the great case of Ire- 
land versus England. The Court of Public 
Opinion rings with the eloquent plea of the 
Irish Prosecutor against the Prisoner at the 
Bar. Be the Prisoner guilty or be he innocent, 
it is clear that by the process of Law, he is 
entitled to present to the Jury any facts which 
may be necessary to a fair verdict. To this 
Suit, Ireland and England are both parties. 
All the more important is it that the United 
States should maintain an attitude completely 
free from bias. 

In the following few pages, I purpose fur- 
nishing the Jury with facts not at the 

>3 



14 THE IRISH CASE 

moment easily available in the United States. 
It is no part of my purpose to deny that Ire- 
land has suffered from many and lamentable 
grievances. In so far as England was to blame 
for this state of things, I shall not attempt to 
excuse her. In so far as she is still to blame, 
I shall not defend her, except by remarking 
that no nation is perfect and that every nation, 
therefore, in passing judgment on its neigh- 
bour should remember its own peccadilloes. I 
see no reason why the Cause of Ireland should 
not be handled with good humour and sanity. 
All that we need is the truth about it and Truth 
seldom loses her temper. 

If we analyse the grievances of Ireland, we 
shall find that they fall into four main cate- 
gories : 

(i) Religious 

(2) Agrarian 

(3) Financial 

(4) Parliamentary 

What is the first broad fact to be faced? 
It is that of these four grievances, the first 
three have entirely passed away leaving only 
the fo Tth to be dealt with. In Ireland to-day 



THE GRIEVANCES OF IRELAND 15 

— as I shall show — there are no religious, no 
agrarian, and no financial grievances seriously 
alleged, and the whole discussion is concen- 
trated upon the best way of remedying the 
Parliamentary grievance. 

What is the next broad fact to be faced? 
It is that all the grievances developed at a 
remote period when in Britain herself the 
people were still struggling for their liberties. 
This was not a quarrel between England and 
Ireland. It was a quarrel in both England and 
Ireland between the unrepresented people and 
their despotic rulers. 

In' England, the Suffrage only dates from 
the Year 1834. It was then a suffrage about 
as generous as that enjoyed by colored folk in 
the Southern States to-day in the United States. 
All the grievances of Ireland had been inflicted 
before the year 1834. The penal laws had 
done their worst. The land system had been 
in full swing since the days of King Henry II 
who brought it over from feudal France. 
Overtaxation and the exclusion of Irish prod- 
ucts were already on record. And thirty years 
had passed since Pitt had destroyed the Irish 



. i6 THE IRISH CASE 

Parliament. The fundamental miscalculation 
• of the Irish extremists is to treat the England 
which sends scores of Labour members to the 
House of Commons as if she were still the 
England of Cromwell and Elizabeth and James 
I and George III. Since the great Reform 
Bill of Eighty years ago, the Franchise has 
been frequently extended until it is actually 
in advance of the United States in respect 
of Women's Suffrage. As the people obtained 
power, they dealt more and more firmly with 
the Irish as with their own grievances. De 
Valera is not attacking aristocratic Englan ' 
He is attacking the England of the Tra 
Union, of the Baptist Chapel, of the Method: - 
Class Meeting. He is attacking the England 
that chose Lady Astor, an American girl, -o 
be the first sitting member of the House . 
Commons — a woman. This England has-maai 
proposal after proposal to the Irish nation. It 
has invited Irishmen to bring forward their 
own proposals. There is not a party in Britain 
and there is not a statesman in Britain who 
does not to-day want Ireland to accept her full 
liberties. 



THE GRIEVANCES OF IRELAND 17 

It would be absurd for me to describe once 
again what was meant by the Penal Laws. 
They were iniquitous — indeed, nearly as iniq- 
uitous as the attempt to suppress my own 
Quaker ancestors. But after all, they wfcre 
only the inevitable reaction of the Protestants 
against the terrible persecutions which the 
Roman Church had inflicted on their fore-' 
fathers in Spain, Britain, France and other 
countries. From my own college, Latimer, 
though a Bishop, was led out to be burnt alive, 
and being burnt alive is not pleasant, whether 
for others or for Latimer. Moreover, many 
of these laws were inflicted also on Puritans. 
That was why three centuries ago, the May- 
flozuer set sail for Plymouth, Massachusetts. 
The point here is, however, that whatever may 
have been the case in the past, there is to-day 
perfect religious liberty wherever the English 
language is spoken. 

As a rule, Roman Catholics are in a minority. 
But they are none the less free. In London, 
they are decorating the most resplendent cathe- 
dral in the Metropolis. In Ireland, they have 
their own schools maintained out of the Im- 



i8 THE IRISH CASE 

perial Exchequer and their own Universities 
similarly supported. The Hierarchy in Ireland 
has a far more rigid grip over education than 
would be allowed to any clergy in the United 
States. Under these circumstances, I do not 
see that anything further need be said about 
the Religious Grievances of Ireland. If Eng- 
lishmen were omnipotent, they could not alter 
the past. There is nothing to atone for that 
past which, in matters of religion, they have 
not done. If there is any country where the 
Clergy have more power than in Ireland, one 
would like to know of it. 



11 

IS IRELAND PLUNDERED? 

I WILL now deal with the accusation that 
Britain is to-day plundering and robbing 
Ireland. If this is the fact, then, I admit 
that it is a very shocking affair but the question 
to be decided first is whether it is a fact. 
Broadly, the charge is twofold in character. 
First, Ireland is being taxed out of existence. 
And secondly, her industries are being 
strangled. 

Let us take these allegations in turn. 
It is admitted that, fifty years ago, Ireland 
was overtaxed. This was shown on the records 
not of Ireland merely but of the British 
Treasury and the verdict was based on com- 
parative wealth as well as population. When 
the case was thus made clear, the grievance 
19 



20 THE IRISH CASE 

was dealt with. The last financial year of 
peace was from March, 191 3 to March, 1914. 
If you take the whole of the Revenue raised 
in Ireland during that twelve months, you will 
find that it was fifty-five and a half million 
dollars. If you take the money spent on Ire- 
land and in Ireland for the sole benefit of 
Irishmen, you will find that it was sixty-one 
and a half million dollars. In other words, 
Ireland was asked to pay not one penny to the 
Army, the Navy, the National Debt, the Dip- 
lomatic Services, the Court, or any other Im- 
perial or as Americans would put it, Federal 
purpose. She was more fortunate in this re- 
spect than any of the forty-eight states in the 
American Union, and this at a period when, 
even before the war, the rest of Europe was 
groaning under military burdens. As a coun- 
try defended" free of charge to her taxpayers, 
Ireland was unique. 

I am, of course, well aware that in saying 
that Ireland was defended free of charge, I 
am using a fact which has no terrors for Mr. 
De Valera. Sinn Fein regards the Germany 
of the Kaiser as a friend, not as an enemy. In 

> 



" IS IRELAND PLUNDERED? 21 

Perlin, the emissary of Sinn Fein was Sir 
V lioger Casement, who had drawn a British 
pension and received with gratitude a British 
knighthood. Owing to long residence in trop- 
fbal clieiates, he had become a moral pervert 
* and was a suitable instrument for the treachery 
which he perpetrated. Years before, I had had 
a conversation with him in which he had de- 
nounced the Monroe Doctrine and the foreign 
policy of the United States as an iniquitous 
and selfish reservation of South America from 
German enterprise. In Berlin, he tried to se- 
duce Irish prisoners of war who stood firm 
against his bribes and his threats, and he then 
sailed for Ireland on a submarine belonging to 
the fleet that sank the Lusitania with American 
citizens and the Tttscania with American 
troops. 

Casement's action may be compared with 
the position of De Valera, as reported in the 
American press: 

As far as England is concerned, the Irish 
people wished and hoped that Germany would 
win the war. 



22 THE IRISH CASE 

In presenting this quotation, I must make 
it clear that I do not make myself responsible 
for so cruel a slander on the gallant Irish dead. 
I am merely allowing Sinn Fein to speak for 
itself. Different folk approach this question 
from different standpoints. Sinn Fein wanted 
the Germans in Ireland. Sinn Fein prefers 
the fate of Belgium under the Germans to the 
fate of Ireland under the British. They do 
'tiot apparently take Cardinal Mercier's view 
of the outrages committed by the German 
Armies on Catholic Churches and Catholic nuns. 
Therefore when I say that Ireland and her 
Churches and her nuns were defended from 
similar outrages by a British Fleet maintained 
without charge to Ireland, Sinn Fein is doubt- 
less xmstirred. 

But I have as yet greatly understated the 
case. We have seen that fifty-five million 
dollars was raised in Ireland and sixty-one 
millions spent in Ireland. This means that 
Ireland was not even meeting the cost of her 
own education, old age pensions, health insur- 
ance and similar services. She was accepting 
from England a steadily rising subsidy of six 



IS IRELAND PLUNDERED? 23 

millions a year and this was how England 
"plundered" her. 

The war then broke out and taxation was 
increased throughout the United Kingdom and 
indeed throughout the world. The question is 
whether Ireland is now paying an unfair pro- 
portion. I will put the answer in the form 
of a table, based on the official returns for 
the year 1918-1919. First, we shall see how 
much each country, England, Scotland and 
Ireland, paid altogether into the Treasury. 
Next, we shall see how much of this came 
back to the country in question as pensions 
school grants and so on. Finally, we are left 
with the balance which each country handed 
over to the cost of the war and imperial or 
"federal" purposes. 

Totai Spent Balance for Im- 

Country Taxes Locally perial Purposes 

England and 

Wales $3,455,310,000 $719,237,500 $2,736,072,500 

Scotland , . . 486,605,000 97,635,000 388,970,000 

Ireland 186,375,000 110,807,500 75,567,50a 

What do these figures mean? The popula- 
tion of Scotland and Ireland is about the same. 



24' THE IRISH CASE 

Yet Scotland has to pay in imperial taxation 
about three hundred and eighty-nine million 
dollars while Ireland has to pay only seventy- 
five and a half million dollars or one fifth the 
sum. Roughly, England and Wales pay sixty- 
eight dollars a year, Scotland pays eighty-eight 
dollars a year and Ireland pays eighteen dol- 
lars. So much for overtaxation. I live in New 
York State and am ready at any time to com- 
promise with the authorities who collect my 
taxes, by exchanging the American basis for 
the Irish basis of finance. 

You cannot strike a balance between Ireland 
and Britain without taking into the account 
ihe fact that the Irish tenants are buying their 
farms with money lent by Britain and raised 
in London. This scheme represents a liability 
to Britain of £150,000,000 or according to the 
usual reckoning, seven hundred and fifty mil- 
lion dollars. More than two-thirds of this 
money has actually been found. The interest 
paid upon it including the sinking fund which 
settles the debt in 68 years is only 3 3/^% or 
taking interest alone less than half of the rate 
that I am paying on a house mortgage in New 



IS IRELAND PLUNDERED? 25 

York. And during the war, Britain, while 
lending money to Ireland at under 3% has been 
glad to raise money in Wall Street at the equiv- 
alent of 6%, as every American knows. 

Even that is not the whole story. The Bill 
proposed by Mr. Lloyd George adds nothing 
to Ireland's contribution to Imperial funds as 
estimated at the present time. But the Bill 
does hand back to Ireland the whole of her 
debt to the United Kingdom in respect of Land 
Purchase. In other words, the annuities will 
go to the Irish Exchequer and Britain must 
repay her Irish liability out of her own pocket. 
This is a gift of 500 million dollars or more 
than 100 dollars for every man, woman, and 
child in Ireland, whether Sinn Fein or Union- 
ist, for we draw no distinction on ground of 
loyalty. Of course, it may be said that the 
Irish landlord is entitled to nothing at all. And 
I for one hold no brief for landlords. But 
if that argument be advanced, how far are 
you going to carry it? There are Irish land- 
lords in New York City. There are other 
holders of all kinds of property. Lenin and 
Trotsky would have simply taken that prop- 



26 THE IRISH CASE 

erty. That was the naked Bolshevism which 
has been tried in Russia and is being abandoned 
even by its parents. Is that also to be among • 
the methods of Sinn Fein? Does "Oiwselves 
Alone" mean a general confiscation? As a 
matter of fact, the Irish people have been here 
misrepresented by their alleged spokesmen. 
They pay their dues on the Land Purchase 
Scheme with strict fiddity to the law and the 
equity of the case. 

Secondly, I come to the question whether 
Irish industries are being strangled. I will 
take two years, 1904 and 19 14. Both these 
were in the main years of peace. Here in a 
table is exactly what Ireland bought and sold 
in those years: 

1904 1914 

Irish Imports ^55.345,ooo ^73,995,000 

Irish Exports 49,785,000 77,311,000 

These figures show that while England was 
"strangling Irish industries," both exports and 
imports were rising by substantial percentages. 

The war then broke out and Ireland was 
surrounded by the submarines of the German 
allies of Sinn Fein. Yet thanks to the Allied 



IS IRELAND PLUNDERED? 27 

Navies, Ireland could, in a year of war, im- 
port goods to the value of £105,205,000 and 
export goods to the value of £107,171,000, 
or practically double the value of her trade 
Jn 1904. Let us suppose that Great Britain 
and the United States had not kept open the 
seas for Ireland. Where would this trade 
have been? 

And Ireland got good prices for what she 
sold. The money that she received was as we 
'have seen £107,171,000. At the prices of 1904, 
this figure would only have been £58,858,000. 
Even in Ireland the excess profits tax was 
leviable. 

One complaint of the Sinn Feiners is that 
Ireland markets her goods in Great Britain. 
Fr;ankly, I do not cjuite understand where the 
grievance here lies. In the old bad days before 
the Englishman had the vote our rulers put on 
tariffs against Ireland and there was a howl. 
Then we got the vote and took off the tariffs 
admitting all Irish goods, including whiskey 
and stout, free of customs, and, again there is 
a howl because apparently we buy what Irish- 
men wish to sell. Some of the biggest ship- 



28 THE IRISH CASE 

building plants in the world are situated in 
Belfast which is an Irish town. Vessels can 
be ordered to-morVow and used to transport 
Irish gooda- to other countries as for instance 
the United States, which does put a tariff on 
tWem. The reason why this is not done is 
that Britain is Ireland's best customer. Our 
money is detested but it is received. 



Ill 

THE VERDICT OF ULSTER 

IF Britain be really crushing out Ireland's 
industries, the first protests should surely 
come from the part of Ireland which de- 
pends on such industries. Why is it that Ulster 
is in that event so resolute for the British con- 
nection? Most of the businesses in Ulster are 
run by Scotsmen in blood, the Celts of Cale- 
donia, and they are not as a rule indifferent 
to what injures their prosperity. 

We are told that England is preventing the 
development of Ireland's coalfields. Where 
is coal more needed than in the shipyards of 
Belfast? The truth is of course that there 
■^is nothing whatever to prevent Irishmen or 
Americans or anybody else digging in Ireland 
for coal or iron or diamonds if the operation 
is profitable. With the price of coal in Europe 
29 



30 THE IRISH CASE 

three and four times what it was before the 
war and France fighting for the Saar Valley 
and Italy cutting down her forests, the idea 
that some ill-disposed Englishman is saying to 
Irishmen "Thou shalt not hew" is ridiculous. 
In fact, there are some Irishmen who might 
be better employed mining coal for the benefit 
of their neighbours than they are at present. 

What is the opinion of industrial Ulster on 
these matters? I have often discussed things 
in that quarter and this is what I have been 
told. Asked why he fears a Parliament at 
Dublin, the Ulster business man answers: 

^ ■ We are Protestants and the majority in 
the south and west are Catholics. We 
are manufacturers and they are farmers. 
They do not understand us and they like 
us still less. When it comes to taxation, 
where should we be? To relieve the 
farmers, they would put a tariff around 
Belfast and levy customs on our raw 
materials. Everything that Belfast makes, * 
is first imported in crude form. There 
can be no ships without wood and metals 



THE VERDICT OF ULSTER 31 

and there can be no linen without flax. 
All these things must come in free if we 
are to retain our position in neutral mar- 
kets. To break the fiscal unity between 
England and Ireland means our ruin. 

It is not for me to say whether the argument 
is good or bad. Some of the economic rubbish 
talked by Sinn Feiners who presumably would 
have power in an Irish Republic is not exactly 
calculated to reassure the more nervous Ulster- 
men. But the point is that these Ulstermen 
are as much Irish as De Valera himself. They 
say that they are prepared to fight for th^ir 
independence against the proposed Republic. 
And they have certainly voted pretty decisively 
on the subject. 

At the lasf' General Election, the results for 
Dissentient Ulster were as follows: 

Nation- Sinn 
Unionist alist Fein Majority 

Antrim 

- North 9,621 2,673 6,948 

Mid 10,711 2,791^. 7,920 

East 15,206 861' 14.345 

South 13,270 2,313 »lo,957 



32 THE IRISH CASE 

Armagh * 

North 10,238 2,860 . 7,378 

Mid 8,431 5.688 2,743 

South 4,345 78 4.266 

Down 

Mid 10,639 707 9,93i2 

East 6,077 3,876 2,201 

, North 9,200 9,200 

South 8,756 33 8,723 

Londonderry 

North 10,530 3,951 6,579 

South 8,942 3,42s 5,517 

Belfast 

Queens University 1,487 118 1,369 

Cromac 1 1.459 997 10,462 

Duncairn 11.637 271 11,366 

Falls 8,488 3.245 5,243 

Ormeau 7,460 388 7,072 

Pottinger 8,574 393 8,i8r 

St. Anne's 9.155 i,34i 7,8i4 

Shankhill 11,840 534 11,306 

Victoria 9,309 395 8,904 

Woodvale 12,232 1,247 10,985 

Look for a moment at these figures. In two 
of these constituencies, De Valera himself was 
the defeated candidate. In South Down he 
only polled 33 votes. And the plurality against 
Sinn Fein in this area would be the more strik- 
ing if I had included third candidatures, many 
of which polled far more votes than the Sinn 



THE VERDICT OF ULSTER 33 

Feiner, who was away at the bottom of the 
record. 

Yet in face of this almost unanimous verdict 
by the industrial area of Ireland, Sinn Fein-^r- 
knowing that the above facts are not readily 
available to the public in the United States — 
comes here and talks as if an Irish Republic 
weru a perfectly simple proposition, on which 
everybody in Ireland is entirely agreed except 
an insignificant minority. 

It is true that Sinn Fein swept the rest of 
Ireland and I shall in due course admit frankly 
that the fault must be shared by England and 
others. But time will show whether the vic- 
tory was a gesture of irritation with the wor- 
ries of war or a permanent verdict. If the 
verdict is permanent, then it is clear that if 
the South and West of Ireland has a right to 
go off by herself, the North and East has a 
right to live in continued association with 
England. 

But is the verdict permanent? Since the 
General Election, there has been a municipal 
contest in Ireland. The one issue was Republic 
or no Republic and the voting was very re- 



34 THE IRISH CASE 

markable. The number of electors in the coun- 
try was 474,992. Of these, 322,244 — which is 
a very high proportion for a Local Govern- 
ment Vote — went to the polls. The method 
was proportional representation. And the first 
preferences were as follows: 

Sinn Fein 87,311 

Labour 57,626 

Independents and Constitutional Nationalists 91-375 

Unionists 85,932 

Look carefully at those figures. They mean 
that of the first preferences, Sinn Fein only 
obtained about one fourth. If you add the 
Sinn Fein and the Labour vote together, you 
still get only a minority as against the Union- 
ists and the Constitutional Nationalists who 
still want the Union Jack to fly over Ireland. 
The total Republican vote put at its very high- 
est is only 145,000 out of 322,000 or a good 
deal less than half. But many of the Labour 
votes were cast in North East Ulster where 
it is fairly safe to assume that they were not 
Republican. 

As for the seats they were distributed as 
follows : 



THE VERDICT OF ULSTER 35 



SOi ?> <u 

•^ fe u s s I 

Provinces o e o .2 o S* 73 

■ e .5 -S ^ "tJ -g ^ 
P c/) hJ ^ Pi ^ H 

Ulster 308 114 log 94 5 33 663 

Leinster 57 206 151 69 62 45 590 

Munster 7 207 no 60 37 66 487 

Connaught ... 2 44 24 15 4 17 106 

Total... 374 571 394 238 108 161 1846 

What do these figures show? Explain it 
how you will, Sinn Fein has carried only 571 
seats out of 1846 seats in the Local Govern- 
ment of the country, or fewer than a third. 
Two out of three of the men actually doing 
the work of Ireland to-day have not accepted 
De Valera's authority. All those men are 
elected by the free votes of the people. And 
it has to be remembered that the intimidation 
in the south and west of Ireland is all on the 
side of the Sinn Feiners. The United States 
has had a touch of the kind of thing that is 
going on in the famous terrorism of the Molly 
Maguires in Pennsylvania when, for many 
years, police were threatened by men disguised 
as women and the public outraged by offences 



36 THE IRISH CASE 

against life and property. That had to be 
stopped and was ultimately stopped by the 
American authorities and the phenomenon 
bears a family likeness to some more shocking 
crimes in Ireland to-day. 



IV. 

THE FIGHT FOR HOME RULE 

I BEGAN by explaining that Ireland has 
suffered from four main grievances. 
These grievances have been first religious, 
secondly agrarian, thirdly financial, and 
fourthly Parliamentary. We have seen that 
of these grievances, all save the last have dis- 
appeared. There is no persecution of the 
Catholics in Ireland. There are no landlords 
to speak of left in Ireland. And there is no 
overtaxation in Ireland. We are therefore 
free to discuss the one and only grievance 
which has yet to be removed and this is the 
need for a Parliament in Ireland. 

It is no part of the British case to deny the 
facts of history. When William Pitt destroyed 
the old Parliament of Ireland, using for the 
purpose the disgraceful weapon of bribery, he 

37 



38 THE IRISH CASE 

committed a high crime against the Hght. The 
mitigating promise of CathoHc Emancipation 
was not fulfilled and the offence may fairly be 
ranked with the folly which provoked the 
American Revolution. In both instances, a 
mad king was a contributory cause. And in 
both cases, the people were too ignorant and 
too ill-represented in their own Parliament at 
Westminster to make protest against what was 
being done in their name at a distance, as it 
then seemed, in days when travelling was dif- 
ficult. 

The Irishmen of our own time do doubtless 
idealise the Parliament that used to be. It 
was elected mainly by Protestants and on a 
franchise which we should consider absurdly 
narrow. But instead of being broken to bits, 
it should have been reformed and democratised. 
There are many people, I dare say, who criti- 
cise the British House of Commons or Con- 
gress but there are none who would seriously 
advocate abolishing these august institutions. 
No American State would tolerate the loss of 
its Legislature and I remember with what sur- 
prise I watched in Canada the reverence in a 



THE FIGHT FOR HOME RULE 39 

# 

Provincial capital like Toronto for Parlia- 
mentary forms. There you see the Speaker 
in his gown, the Sergeant at Arms with his 
sword, and all the panoply of the High Court 
of Parliament at Westminster, simplified in- 
deed but essentially reproduced. Yet the 
Legislature of Ontario is only one of many 
such subordinate bodies in the Dominion of 
Canada. 

Not only in Ireland but in England also, 
the destruction of the parliament in Dublin has 
been hated as an unpardonable sacrilege against 
the very shrine of Liberty. What the devout 
Moslem feels at hearing that some famous 
Mosque has been desecrated, that was what 
I was taught to feel as a boy about Pitt's 
blasphemous offence. The first political speech 
that I ever heard was by T. P. O'Connor and 
that speech was about Home Rule. It left 
on my mind an indelible impression. As a 
boy, I would walk for miles to catch one 
glimpse of Gladstone as he passed by in the 
train on his immortal campaigns on behalf of 
a restored Parliamentary system in Ireland. 
My boyish diaries are full of newspaper cut- 



40 THE IRISH CASE 

tings and pictures illustrating the early debates 
on Home Rule and the disclosures of the Par- 
nell Commission. I have fought three elec- 
tions — all of them as a Home Ruler, and for 
twelve years I heard every important debate 
in the Imperial Parliament and — what is more 
— described them. The Parliament House at 
Dublin is now the headquarters of the Bank 
of Ireland and it was with a peculiar sense 
of indignation that one watched as it were 
the money changers in the temple. With 
cynical ingenuity the statesmen of a hundred 
years ago ordained that the chamber of the 
Irish Commons should be so completely recon- 
structed into bank parlours that the very fabric 
of it should cease to remind the people of 
what they had lost. But they did leave the 
Irish House of Lords, which they thought less 
dangerous and there I had a seat in the first 
political meeting ever held in that august as- 
sembly room since it ceased to be the Senate 
of the Irish Nation. The occasion was eight 
years ago and a speech on the history of Par- 
liamentary customs in Ireland was delivered 
by that great authority, Professor Swift Mc- 



THE FIGHT FOR HOME RULE 41 

Neill, who is by ancestry related to Dean Swift, 
the author of Gulliver's Travels. 

If these were my feehngs towards Ireland — 
and they were shared by millions of other 
Englishmen — you may imagine how deep are 
the sentiments of Irishmen themselves towards 
the events of the year of grace or to them 
of disgrace, 1800. It must be borne in mind, 
however, that under her Parliament, Ireland 
had shown little content. Two years before 
the blow fell, the country had been in rebellion. 
The Act of Union was a desperate alternative 
to what British statesmen had come to regard 
as a constitutional failure. They were, I be- 
lieve, profoundly wrong but the fact remains 
that they did not take action without serious 
reason. The British Dominions were at death- 
grips with Napoleon. Even in the Navy, there 
had been mutinies. And the troubles in Ire- 
land had aggravated the strategic situation, 
then as during the insurrection of Easter 191 5. 
Moreover, that very House of Lords, of which 
I have spoken, illustrated the passion of the 
period. Still on the walls you may see two 
tapestries, showing not St. Patrick or any 



42 THE IRISH CASE 

romance of Tara's Halls but very different and 
far bloodier dramas. The Battle of the Boyne 
is on one side of the room and the Siege of 
Londonderry is on the other. The Parliament 
House itself is thus eloquent witness of the 
fact that Ireland is still a divided country as * 
historically she always has been. 

It was in 1885 that Gladstone began his fight ' 
for Home Rule in Ireland. In our recent • 
political history, there has been no fight more 
bitter and desperate. The first difficulty that 
had to be faced was British Unionism. This 
consisted of the Protestant Liberals who fol- 
lowed Joseph Chamberlain and John Bright. 
These formed an alliance with their natural 
enemies, the Conservatives under the late Lord 
Salisbury. In the year 1886 the first Home 
Rule Bill was defeated at the polls. In the 
year 1893 the second Home Rule Bill was 
vetoed by the House of Lords. And twenty 
years elapsed before the third Home Rule Bill 
received the Royal Assent. It was a wearisome 
struggle for those of us who were for so long 
on the losing side but we were convinced that 
in the end the predominant partner, as Lord 



THE FIGHT FOR HOME RULE 43 

Rosebery called Great Britain, would be con- 
vinced of the justice of the Irish cause and 
in this we were justified. There is no party' 
and there is no statesman in any British 
A Dominion who does not to-day desire Ireland 
to have a Self Determining Parliament with 
S an autonomous Cabinet responsible to it. The 
, .difficulties have been reduced to Ireland her- 
self. 

Since the year 1885, this fight has gone on. 
The delay has been infinitely wearisome and 
disastrous but it has not been entirely lost time. 
In this generation of struggle, some of the 
thorniest of Ireland's problems have been 
soundly settled. Her Land system was the 
worst and is now tl^e ber ; ^n Europe. Catholics 
and Protestants are satisfied with the provision 
of Universities. And not less important has 
been the establishment of Local Government, 
as completely free of British control as the 
City of San Francisco is free of the control 
of Congress or of the State of New York. If 
there is bad housing in Dublin, it is not the 
business of Great Britain. It is because the 
City of Dublin wishes to have it so. Every city 



44 THE IRISH CASE 

in the United Kingdom, like every City in 
the United States has the housing that it de- 
serves. Land, Local Government and Univer- 
sities — these have all been provided for and 
any one of these questions inight have wrecked 

• an Irish Parliament at the outset of its career. 
Also all these problems have been settled with 

j> British credit and British cash, in addition te 

-^i4iie resources of Ireland herself. 

The change in the attitude of Britain towards 
Ireland is due in part to a broader and freer 
franchise. Until recent years, several votes 
were allowed to persons in Britain who owned 
a particular kind of property and these people 
u^ed Ireland as a convenient obstacle to reform. 
The plural voter has disappeared. So great is 
the change in public sentiment that many people 
who were before plural voters and Conserva- 
tive are now supporting Labour candidates. 

This means that there is now no longer any 
political combination in England against the 

*~claims of Ireland. Even the Unionist Party, 

whose very name means adherence to the Act 

^of Union, has come to advocate the fullest 

measure of self determination in the sister isle. 



THE FIGHT FOR HOME RULE 45 

The House of Lords is crippled and can, under 
th^ Parliament Act, offer no effective re- 
sistance to an Irish settlement even if the peers 
wanted to do so. Not that they any longer 
desire to obstruct the claims of Iteland. In 
the first place, they have got the cash for- their 
land which was their main anxiety in past 
years. And in the second place they see what 
harrh an iinsettled Irish Question is doing to 
British prestige abroad. Therefore we may 
take it that tjie old obstacles in the way of 
Ireland getting a Parliament have vanished. 
Even Mr. Balfour has surrendered and occupies 
a prominent seat on the penitent form. ^, 
I can well understand that Ireland, accus- 
tomed to the loose and inaccurate abuse of 
"England" which has been common political 
coinage for so many years, should fail to ap- 
preciate that the England of the late Lord 
Salisbury and the late Mr. Chamberlain has 
disappeared. The constant insistence on past- 
wrongs, which lose nothing in the telling, has 
been the worst possible mental food for^^n 
impressionable and poetic people. There is 
not a country in Europe that does not envy 



46 THE IRISH CASE 

♦^Ireland her present prosperity and Ireland de- 
serves that prosperity. By refusing to go to 
Westminster and playing at revolution instead 
of at Straight politics, the Sein Fein members 
of Parliament have cut themselves off from 
the facts at a time in the world's history when 
facts are irresistible elements in framing 
policy. 

Let us then consider simply and briefly the 
efforts that have been made in the last ten 
years to secure for Ireland a Parliament. The 
position in July, 19 14, was entirely clear as 
far as England was concerned. Her Tories 
might rage furiously together as indeed they 
did, but the Home Rule Act was on the Statute 
Book and had received the Royal Assent, which 
I iiiyself heard given in the House of Lords. 

There were then three leaders of the Irish 
Party, John Redmond, John Dillon and Joseph 
Devlin. These were the men who obviously 
would have to govern Ireland under the new 
measure. Two of them, I think, had served 
terms of imprisonment as political offenders. 
But all of them were now in intimate touch 
with Augustine Birrell, the Chief Secretary 



THE FIGHT FOR HOME RULE 47 

and the best Chief Secretary that Ireland ever 
has had. Were these men prepared to accept 
office under the Home Rule Act and administer 
it for the whole of Ireland? It is an open 
secret that they or one or two of them were 
not. And the reason of their hesitation was 
the open opposition of Ulster. They agreed 
that a settlement with Ulster was essential. 
If they had said that they were prepared to go 
forward with the bill and enforce it on Ulster, 
they could have had it in 19 14. And I was one 
of the many Liberals who wanted that word to 
be said. 

A Conference was then called at Bucking- 
ham Palace and it was opened by King George 
himself. Mr. Redmond attended and so did 
Sir Edward Carson. The whole situation was 
reviewed and the one object of British states- 
men of all parties was to overcome in some 
way the still fierce animosities of the two Irish 
factions. In the end, it was decided that the 
only plan was to cut from the Bill or more 
accurately the Act the dissentient counties of 
north east Ulster until the time should come 
when they would enter the scheme of their 



48 THE IRISH CASE 

own accord. Many people believed that the 
minority would not stay out long. With a 
Parliament sitting in Dublin, they would, as 
combative Irishmen, want to be in the show. 
But in everyone's interests, it was a good thing 
that Ulster should adopt the new arrangement 
of her own free will and without a sense of 
defeat. It will be seen that the entire problem 
to be faced now concerned Ireland and Ireland i 
alone. British statesmen only appeared in it 
as conciliators. 

Conciliation failed. It failed solely for an 
Irish reason. The question arose what was 
to be regarded as the true definition of dis- 
sentient Ulster. It was the kind of question . 
that has disturbed the statesmen of Europe a 
score of times during the formulation of the 
Peace Treaty. Was Fiume to be an Italian 
or a Jugo-Slav city? Was Dantzig to belong 
to Poland or to Prussia? And what about 
certain areas in Schleswig-Holstein ? Indeed, 
we have the same kind of discussion li\ the 
case of Tacna and Arica in South America. 
The Conference broke up in the main over the 
Counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone. Both 



THE FIGHT FOR HOME RULE 49 

sides claimed them. In agreeing to exclude 
even temporarily any part of Ireland, Mr. Red- 
mond had strained the loyalty of his party 
to breaking point and he dared go no further. 
On their side, the Orangemen were openly 
desirous of wrecking the whole Act. 

It is doubtless a fact that the Ulstermen were 
assisted by allies in England among the older 

^J3onservatives. Just as the Nationalists were 
using the Liberal and Labour parties, so the 
Orangemen were using whatever friends they 
<?ould find. But the root fact in the situation 
was the division. It was a division not in 
England but in Ireland. The arming of Ulster 

'^nay have been right or wrong, it may have 

been mere bluff or a serious threat. I will say 

something more about it a little later. But 

^ iti was at least an evidence that politically 

Ulster was as zealous on one side as the other 

' parts of Ireland were zealous on the other side. 
Those conflicting zeals were not England's 
i'ault. John Knox who founded the Presby- 
terianism of Ulster as of other countries was 
not an Englishman. St. Patrick who founded 
Catholicism of Ireland was also not an 



t 



- sa THE IRISH CASE - . 

Englishman, at any rate of .recent extraction. 
• The sermons on one side and the other which 
"^. rent Ireland in twain were not preached by 
Englishmen. 

Addressing audiences as I am sometimes 

asked to do, I nevef" touch on Ireland without 

having some Irishmen on one side or the other 

, coming up to me and telling me that I have 

' failed to express his feelings aS a partisan. 

> Catholics and Protestants say this to me, and 

-""">for this reason — my attitude is the detached 

attitude of the great body of the British people. 

In August, 1914, the Irish Parties were so 

utterly at variance that by common consent, 

it was decided to suspend the Home Rule Act 

until the war should be over. This was no 

perfidy on the part of Britain. ' The Irish dif- 

• f erences were carried into the Army itself and 

it was held that you could not ask soldiers to 

go into battle and die together, wlien bitter 

controversies were raging among their friends 

at home. Of course this argument did not 

. move the Sinn Feiners who wanted Germany 

to win the war and said so openly. But the 

rest of us may be permitted to take the view 



, THE FIGHT FOR HOME RULE 51 

that the urgencj'^ of the war justified an ar- 
rangement of politics in Ireland which country 
lay safe behind the guns of the British fleet 
and would take no kind of harm from a delay 
during which no Irishman was compelled to 
strike a blow for freedom except by his own 
free will. 

It is sometimes said that the Home Rule 
Act was a failure. From the Nationalist stand- 
point, this is untrue. They accepted the Aojf 
and. were satisfied with it. They agreed that 
Britain had done the just and right thing. 
They said so everywhere. The Ac't redeemed 
^very promise that had ever been made whether 
to PaVnell or to Redmond. If the Act was 
postponed, it was merely to prevent civil 
trouble within Ireland herself. 

For the moment I will only record the fact 
that in the Easter of 191 5 the Germans suc- 
ceeded in stirring up what has been called 
somewhat excitedly the Easter Rebellion, which 
continued for a day or two but was not more 
serious intrinsically than certain negro riots of 
a recent date elsewhere. Immediately after 
the Rebellion, Great Britain came forward 



N 



52 , THE IRISH CASE 

again as conciliator and sought to gather the^ 
various factions of Ireland into one family. 
An Ireland, united and peaceful under her own 
institutions, was the British policy, then as at 
any time for many years. A Convention was 
therefore called. 

It was to be a purely Irish Convention. It* 
was to sit' in Ireland. It was to be presided , 
over by an Irishman, Sir Horace Plunkett, 
whose life had been devoted to restoring the 
industries and the agriculture of Ireland. The 
British Chief Secretary was only to have a 
seat in the Convention as the medium for giv- 
ing information on the many constitutional and 
economic points that would arise. The whole 
main task of getting Irishmen to sit in the 
same room together was performed by British 
peacemakers. 

When the Convention was called, the Sinn 
Feiners were not only invited to attend, but 
they were begged to come and put their ideas 
into the common stock. They were not asked 
to deal with the tyrannical Englishman but 
with their fellow Irishmen. When they w^re 
invited, it was known perfectly well that they 



THE FIGHT FOR HOME RULE 53 

ha3 been plotting with the Germany of the 

Kaiser which was at that very moment behav- 

sj. irr^ with inconceivable cruelty in Belgium and 

* otlier countries. Yet this damning fact was 

■ ■*^jverlooked and the right hand was extended 

tb' these men who had been asking all along 

'^for the Irish question to be settled in Ireland 

n^' rather than at Westminster. In calling the 

^r^onvention, Britain was taking the Sinn 

.?— -Seiners at their word, and with what result? 

The friends of De Valera were not out for 

settlement. It was their business to get up 

trouble and they stood as completely aloof from 

the Convention in Dublin as they are now 

standing aloof from the Parliament at West- 

. minster. They wanted to talk and agitate, 

conspire and plot and boycott, but they did not 

want to take responsibility. They were part 

of a larger game. That game would have 

been spoilt if the Convention had succeeded. 

Ireland was merely a pawn in that game. 

^ The extremists on one side were answered 

by the extremists on the other. Sinn Fein and 

Orangemen each played into the hands of the 

other. While Sinn Fein was pulling every 



' 54 ' THE IRISH CASE 

wire, both in Ireland and in the United States, 
to wreck the Convention, the Orangemen were 
gradually mobilising their forces. The Report 
of the Convention was not unanimous and the 
dissentients appi^led to British Toryism. Mr. 
Asquith was then at the head of a Coalition 
Government and he was confronted by the 
-fhos* appalling crisis thart humanity has ever 
had to face. Thinking of themselves alone, 
U did not matter to the Sinn" Feiners at all 
'fif Rumania was overrun and Serbia struck 
"down and Russia convulsed and Armenia 
^cleared of Christians. Paris might have fallen 
and -Rome been sacked, but Sinn Fein would 
have been true to her motto "Ourselves alone." 
Be that as it may, Mr. Asquith undoubtedly 
^ Saved his Cabinet from breaking up by sur- 
rendering the partial settlement that had been 
reached, to the clamours of the English Tories 
who were acting for and with the North East- 
ern Ulstermen. The Nationalist Party re- 
ceived thereby a grave blow. But what com- 
plaint has Sinn Fein to make ? It was exactly 
the situation for which they had planned and 
plotted and organised. 



THE FIGHT FOR HOME RULE 55 

. If the Convention had succeeded, Ireland 
would have been peaceful to-day, and one result 
would have been that the Anti-British agitation 
in the United States would have been deprived "^^ 
of its main sustenance. Thfcre was thus a 
strong trans-Atlantic reason why it must not 
succeed. The Parliamentary grievance had 
become for many people more valuable ^thajji 
any conceivable remedy. The very generosity 
of the Imperial Parliament meant that there 
was no longer any pressing material reasOp' 
for a change. Taking the benefits while con- 
tinuing the grumble was like getting the best 
of both worlds. On Saturday night th^' old 
people receive their pensions on every note of ^ 
which is the head of King George and the rest 
of the week is available for discussing Ireland's 
wrongs. Nor does the pension in any way 
interfere with Presidential contests elsewhere. 
There is thus a certain unreality in the position. 
I have been much impressed by the curious 
perplexity of American journalists who visit 
Ireland and are unable to find any solution for 
the paradoxes which they encounter. 



\ 



THE LLOYD GEORGE SETTLEMENT 

WE are now in a position to consider 
how the Irish Question stands to- 
day. From all the medley of often 
unreal emotions that have been aroused, there 
emerges the one obvious fact that Britain has 
every reason whether of self-interest or of im- 
perial necessity to settle the matter here and 
now. If the problem is not settled, it is because 
powerful political forces are working in Ire- 
land and elsewhere to prevent a solution being 
reached. It is not a question of Britain ob- 
stinately refusing to give Ireland what Ireland 
wants. The position is reversed and we now 
see Britain thrusting on Ireland liberties and 
responsibilities which Ireland finds less allur- 
ing, the nearer she approaches to them. 

In the British House of Commons, there 
are two political Coalitions confronting each 

56 




•) Ijiif I'lihlisliiii;/ ( II. By courtesy oj Life 

Sam : if you need assurance, sir, you may like to know 
riiAT you have the loyal friendship of all decent people in 
ouk couxtky. 



THE LLOYD GEORGE SETTLEMENT 57 

other. The one is led by Mr. Lloyd George 
and the other is led by Mr. Asquith. Each of 
liese statesmen has his own plan for dealing 
,v;ith the Irish situation. One plan may be 
(fitter than the other but the point here is that 
Ireland may have either. It is really no use 
for the Irish extremists to criticise out of ex- 
istence first the Asquith and then the Lloyd 
George policy unless they have a plan of their 
own. Nor is it any use for them to criticise 
details. The details can be altered and have 
been altered times without number. If the 

i . . . 

spirit is not right, the details will always seem 
wrong. It is no use for the critics to play 
f*? off the Asquith Plan against the Lloyd George 
Plan. Mr. Lloyd George is the kind of man 
who would change one plan for the other if 
thereby he could get a settlement. 

I will begin with the Asquith Plan. He 
says that the Home Rule Act being on the 
Statute Book should be brought into operation. 
He admits that it cannot be applied to Ulster 
without modifications. He would therefore 
give to each Irish county an option to remain 
out of the Scheme until it wants to come into 



-5S THE IRISH CASE 

it. Or he would discuss a proposal to establish 
, , in Ulster a Council for purely Ulster Affairs. 
Broadly, then, Mr. Asquith wants Home Rul6 
on Gladstonian lines with concessions to Ulstet. 
Mr. Lloyd George prefers a new measure 
entirely. He would give to Ireland not one 
i«-. Parliament but two. The first would sit in 
1^ Dublin and the second in Belfast. The first 
would represent the South and West of Ireland 
, which is mainly agricultural and Catholic while 
'^the second would represent the Protestant in- 
dustries of the North. These two Parliaments 
\^ould each select ten men who would sit to- . 
^i^ther on a central body and adjust matters 
' between the neighbouring legislatures. The ■ 

Parliaments would have liberty to unite and 
_ establish the one and indivisible Ireland which 
^^s the aim of modern British statesmanship. 

r 

The plans have been called two Councils 
under a Parliament or two Parliaments under 
a Council. The advantage enjoyed by the 
Prime Minister is that he is in power with 
a solid Parliament at Westminster behind his 
policy of pushing through his scheme without 
delay. 



THE LLOYD GEORGE SETTLEMENT 59 

If Britain lived under a written Constitution 
like that of the United States, these plans might 
be open to grave objection as a permanent set- 
tlement. But they are not to be regarded as 
the last word on Ireland, if ever there will 
be such a last word. They can and they will 
^ be amended as experience reveals improve- 
ments which may be made. The mere fact that 
' Ireland is to have two Parliaments of her own 
does not mean that her voice is to be silenced 
.'• at Westminster. She will still enjoy the right 
\ in the Imperial Parliament to more than forty 
■ seats. Her statesmen will still be eligible for 
and invited into the inner counsels of the Brit- 
ish Empire. No grievance of Ireland will lack 
ample ventilation. 

Ulster has accepted the Lloyd George Plan. 
She has reached this decision reluctantly but 
she has at last got there. This means that with 
the Bill on the statute book, there is, as a matter 
of course, a Parliament in Belfast. 

In the South and West of Ireland, it is hoped 
that a similar result will follow. Given a 
Parliament actually in being at Dublin, it is 
scarcely conceivable that the Nationalist areas 



6o THE IRISH CASE 

as they used to be called will stand aloof. They 
vote for their County Councils and their City 
Corporations and they also vote for their mem- 
bers to sit in the House of (^ommons at West- 
minster. It is a fair prophecy that they wiU 
vote for the Dublin Parliament. 

When the Parliaments meet, each will dis- 
cover that there are many other problems in 
Ireland beside the old and outworn quarrel 
with England. It is very unlikely that we 
shall see a solid body of Catholics confronting 
a solid body of Protestants. Both in Ulster 
and in the rest of Ireland, there will be cer- 
tainly a Labour Group. In the recent muilieipal 
elections, that group as we have seen had al- 
ready become formidable. At present it is 
divided. When the Irish Trade Uniqu Con- 
gress called out the entire organised trades of 
the country on a general strike in favour of the 
Sinn Fein prisoners in Dublin, not a man in 
Belfast downed tools. With all the authority 
of the Federation behind the strike, Ulster 
^stood aside because Ulster utterly disapproved 
-of the reason for the stoppage. But wli^n the 
issue of independence is out of the way, the 



THE LLOYD GEORGE SETTLEMENT 6i 

influence of Labour will tend in the direction of 
the united Ireland which Britain is working to 
secure. 

Again, the old division will be mitigated by 
a common postal and pension system and by 
the common system of land purchase. Just as 
the middle western states in America sell food 
to the eastern states and receive manufactures 
in exchange, so do the agricultural parts of 
Ireland trade with Belfast. Not alone do Dub- 
lin Banks serve the South and West; Belfast 
Banks also have branches all over Ireland and 
thus form another link. 

Ulstermen fear that the Parliament at Dub- 
lin will simply set up a Republic and make more 
trouble than ever. I doubt whether this will- 
be the case. The old Nationalists were divided 
into Liberals under Dillon and Clericals under 
LIcaly. There will be similar divisions in the 
days to come. And they will be healthy in 
every way. The chief issue will be the control 
of the common schools about which we must 
expect a lively controversy among Catholics 
themselves. 

In the case of the United States,^ there was 



62 THE IRISH CASE 

great difficulty at first in the way of getting 
the original thirteen colonies to form one federal 
government. But in the end, it was done. Canada 
also had her troubles and to this day, New- 
foundland stands outside the Dominion which 
includes nine provinces every one of which 
joined the others by its own free consent. In 
the case of South Africa, also, the Union was 
threatened by the dissent of Natal, which was 
the Ulster of that great country. But even 
Natal was won for the Union and came in, 
moved by no force save the force of persua- 
sion. In Australia the dissentient was New 
South Wales. But here once more the great 
argument prevailed. I do not doubt that, under 
the present scheme, we shall see before long 
Ireland united. But of course the majority 
must recognise that there can be no question of 
paying off old scores against the minority. 
There must be a general amnesty to the ancient 
feuds. 

For myself, I say frankly that I see no rea- 
son in the world why Ireland should not be 
included in the League of Nations. England 
and Scotland and Wales have one vote between 



THE LLOYD GEORGE SETTLEMENT 63 

them and the United States has no vote at all, 
so that if Ireland has two votes, one for the 
South and West and the other for Ulster, I 
should think that this grievance at any rate 
should be removed. 

And lastly, I really don't very much mind 
if in parts of Ireland they fly a more or less 
green flag. Wales has a big red dragon on 
her flag and so has Scotland and these dragons 
seem expressly designed to insult St. George, 
the Patron saint of England, who I understand 
was once prosecuted for profiteering, though 
afterwards he received, as was most justly due, 
a title. My feelings about the Union Jack are 
those of Stalky and Co. in Kipling's story. 
I would as soon wave it about anywhere and 
everywhere as I would wave my marriage cer- 
tificate or my wife's last love letter. When I 
see the Union Jack, it does not make me want 
to cheer. I would as soon cheer and applaud 
the Holy Communion, So that if Irishmen 
do not want to wave this flag, it is their loss, 
not mine. I am glad to know that there are 
few homes in England where the Stars and 
Stripes are not welcome. But one thing is 



64 THE IRISH CASE 

clear. The Sinn Fein extremists must not try 
to force the flag which they have adopted upon 
Ulster. That is the real issue to-day. Let 
them advocate Secession for themselves if they 
will. The answer will be found in these pages. 
But to try to force Secession on Ulster would 
be as unreasonable as it would be for the 
United States to try to force Secession on the 
Dominion of Canada. 



VI 

IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 

STANDING at the Court of Public Opin- 
ion in America, I have dealt hitherto 
only with the grievances of Ireland. My 
submission has been 

First, that Catholic Disabilities under 
the Penal Laws have been transformed 
into Catholic privileges in the Schools and 
Universities ; 

Secondly, that the worst Land System 
in Europe has been transformed into the 
best and at the cost of the British investor; 

Thirdly, that the overtaxation of Ire- 
land has been reversed into undertaxation ; 

And fourthly, that the refusal by Bri- 
tain to restore the Parliamentary institu- 
tions of Ireland has been changed into a 
determination that such institutions shall 
65 



66 THE IRISH CASE 

be set up in Ireland, whatever be the hos- 
tiHty of those who wish to keep the old 
quarrels alive. 

But I admit that the Case is still incom- 
pletely handled. Ireland has not only griev^ 
ances but hopes, and while the removal of 
grievances is much, there can be no tranquillity 
until her hopes are satisfied. 

We often hear it said that the trouble with 
Ireland is spiritual and this is true. The trouble 
with Mexico is also spiritual. Yet Mexico is 
not oppressed by Britain. There is ^ti^ouble 
of the spirit that goes far beyond the region 
of politics. And sometimes, I have thought 
that Irishmen have expected of Britain what 
they can only get from God. A man's happi- 
ness, after all, depends on other circumstances 
than the sovereignty under which he lives. 
Even in the United States, which is guided 
by the wisdom of Congress, men and women 
sometimes talk as if they were not entirely 
happy. 

The expression of discontent in Ireland is 
called Sinn Fein. The origin of this move- 



IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 67 

ment was literary and artistic rather, than 
poHtical, one object being to restore the use 
of the Erse language. The movement was 
particularly popular with young College men, 
educated in Ireland's developed universities, 
who saw no reason for emigrating to the 
United States. No one will, I think, deny that 
the lapse of languages like Gaelic and Welsh 
and Erse and Breton and Red Indian dialects, 
is a sacrifice of the picturesque to the practical. 
But in the United States, what is called Ameri- 
canism means in the main the insistence of the 
authorfties upon the knowledge by all citizens 

\ of a common language and while in Canada, 
the ttse of French is guaranteed to Quebec, it 

<"' is by no means certain that the French Cana- 
j.iians have been wholly benefited by their 
IjYiguistic severance from the rest of North 

4 America. Be that as it may, no objection of 
any kind has ever been made by Britain to 

^^ Irishmen talking or teaching any language they 

" likp, whether any one understands it or not. 
This toleration left Sinn Fein with nothing 
**to protest against. But when Mr. Redmond 
accepted the Home Rule Acts of Mr. Asquith, 



68 THE IRISH CASE 

an issue was provoked by the Clan-na-Gael 
of the United States \vhich cabled over the 
strongest messages of dissent. Gradually, the 
Sinn Fein Movement which had been an asser- 
tiqn of Ireland's independence of the mind, 
developed into a political association, leagued 
with the relics of Fenianism and with the most 
violent section of Labour, as led by men like 
Jim Larkin, now sentenced in the United States 
for criminal Anarchy. 

The phrase Sinn Fein means "ourselves 
alone" and this is one of the few occasions 
in history, and perhaps the only one in which 
a movement professing to be generous and 
democratic has adopted as its slogan the watch- 
word Selfishness. The demand for an Irish 
Republic is confined to the group which has 
thus proclaimed Selfishness to be the supreme 
virtue. 

Pursuant of their policy of thinking only 
of themselves, the Sinn Fein leaders threw 
themselves, as we have seen, heart and soul 
into the work of securing the triumph of Ger- 
many over any small nation like Belgium or 
Serbia or Rumania or Poland which did not 



IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 69 

happen to be Ireland. The Irishmen who were 
dying for the cause of Hberty — men Hke Tom 
Kettle and Willie Redmond — were denounced 
and misrepresented and hounded as far as pos- 
sible out of political life, for no other reason 
except that they were fighting a noble and un- 
selfish battle instead of fighting for Sinn Fein^ 
or themselves alone. 

In the Election of 19 18, many Sinn Feiners 
were elected to the British House of Commons. 
That was the tribunal where first they should 
have advanced their claim for an Independent 
Irish Republic. In the forms of the House, 
there was nothing to prevent the proposition 
being debated. The Independence of Ireland 
could have been expressed in the terms of a 
Resolution and if that had been approved em- 
bodied in an Act of Parliament. But of course 
the Sinn Feiners would have had to lay their 
cards on the table. They would have had to 
meet the millions of Irishmen at home and 
abroad who do not accept their leadership. And 
tliey therefore decided that it would be more 
prudent to assemble at Dublin all by themselves 
and adopt a Declaration of Independence, 



70 THE IRISH CASE 

which would do admirably for American con- 
sumption. 

On the 2 1 St of January, 191 9, the Dail 
Eireann or Parliament of Ireland approved the 
following document: 

"Whereas the Irish people is by right a free 
people, and whereas for seven hundred years 
the Irish people has never ceased to repudiate 
and has repeatedly protested in arms against 
foreign usurpation; 

"And whereas English rule in this country 
is, and always has been, based upon force and 
fraud and maintained by military occupation 
against the declared will of the people; 

"And whereas the Irish Republic was pro- 
claimed in Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916, 
by the Irish Republican Army, acting on behalf 
of the Irish people ; 

"And whereas the Irish people is resolved 
to secure and maintain its complete inde- 
pendence in order to promote the common 
weal, to re-establish justice, to provide for 
future defence to insure peace at home and 
good will with all nations, and to constitute 



IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 71 

a national policy based upon the people's will, 
with equal right and equal opportunity for 
every citizen; 

"And whereas at the threshold of a new era 
in history the Irish electorate has in the 
General Election of December, 1918, seized the 
first occasion to declare by an overwhelming 
majority its firm allegiance to the Irish Re- 
public ; 

"Now, therefore, we, the elected Representa- 
tives of the ancient Irish people, in National 
Parliament assembled, do, in the name of the 
Irish Nation, ratify the establishment of the 
Irish Republic and pledge ourselves and our 
people to make this Declaration effective by 
every means at our command; 

"We ordain that the elected Representatives 
of the Irish people alone have power to make 
laws binding on the people of Ireland, and that 
the Irish Parliament is the only Parliament 
to which that people will give its allegiance; 

"We solemnly declare foreign government 
in Ireland to be an invasion of our National 
Right, which we will never tolerate, and we 



72 THE IRISH CASE 

demand the evacuation of our country by the 
English garrison; 

"We claim for our national independ-ince 
the recognition and support of every free na- 
tion of the world, and we proclaim that inde- 
pendence to be a condition precedent to inter- 
national peace hereafter. 

"In the name of the Irish people we humbly 
commit our destiny to Almighty God, who 
gave our fathers the courage and determination 
to persevere through centuries of a ruthless 
tyranny, and strong in the justice of the cause 
which they have handed down to us, we ask 
His Divine blessing on this the last stage of 
the struggle which we have pledged ourselves 
to carry through to Freedom." 

This document refers inaccurately to Eng- 
lish Rule in Ireland. When it was issued, the 
Viceroy of Ireland was Viscount French, an 
Irishman. The Chief Secretary for Ireland 
•was Mr. MacPherson, a Scotsman. His suc- 
cessor is Sir Hamar Greenwood, a Canadian. 
And the Prime Minister under whom these 



IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 73 

men were serving was David Lloyd George, a 
Welshman. 

With regard to force and fraud, I can best 
answer the Declaration by quoting from the 
speech which Mr. John Redmond delivered in 
Australia in 19 15, when the friends of Sinn 
Fein were trying to help Germany by dis- 
couraging recruits from enlisting. Mr. Red- 
mond referred to his previous Australian visit, 
and said: 

"I went to Australia to make an appeal on 
behalf of an enslaved, famine-hunted, despair- 
ing people, a people in the throes of a semi- 
revolution, bereft of all political liberties and 
engaged in a life and death struggle with the 
system of a most brutal and drastic coercion. 
Only thirty-three or thirty-four years have 
passed since then, but what a revolution has 
occurred in the interval. To-day the people, 
broadly speaking own the soil; to-day the 
labourers live in decent habitations; to-day 
there is absolute freedom in local government 
and the local taxation of the country; to-day 
we have the widest parliamentary and munici- 



74 THE IRISH CASE 

pal franchise ; to-day we know that the evicted 
tenants, who are the wounded soldiers of the 
land war have been restored to their homes 
or to other homes as good as those from which 
they had been originally driven. We know 
that the congested districts, the scene of some 
of the most awful horrors of the old famine 
days, have been transformed, that the farms 
have been enlarged, decent dwellings have been 
provided, and a new spirit of hope and inde- 
pendence is to-day amongst the people. We 
know that the towns legislation has been 
passed facilitating the housing of the working 
classes. So far as the town tenants are con- 
cerned, we have this consolation, that we 
passed for Ireland an Act whereby they are 
protected against arbitrary eviction, and are 
given compensation not only for disturbance 
from their homes. V.it for !;he good will of 
the business they had "^reateJ, a piece of legis- 
lation far in advancj of anything obtained for 
the tov/n tenants of any other country. We 
knov/ that we have .it last won educational 
freedom in laniversity education for most of 
the youth of Ireland, and we know that in 



IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 75 

the primary and standard education the thirty- 
four years that have passed have witnessed 
an enormous advance in efficiency and in the 
means of bringing efficiency about. To-day 
we have a system of old age pensions in Ire- 
land whereby every old man and woman over 
seventy is saved the workhouse, free to spend 
their last days in comparative comfort. We 
have a system of national industrial insurance 
which provides for the health of the people 
and makes it impossible for the poor hard- 
working man and woman, when sickness comes 
to the door, to be carried away to the work- 
house hospital, and makes it certain that they 
will receive decent Christian treatment during 
their illness." 

Born and bred as they are under a Declara- 
tion of Independence, which declaration freed 
them from British interference, I am not sur- 
prised that many Americans, seeing the Irish 
so stirred up, should assume as a matter of 
course that there ought to be a Republic with 
a capital at Dublin. I can well understand why 
it should be difficult here to draw a distinction 



76 THE IRISH CASE 

between President Paderewski of Poland, and 
President Masaryk of Czecho Slovakia on the 
one hand and President De Valera of Ireland 
on the other. If one-tenth of what is said 
about misrule in Ireland were true, I should 
say myself that a Republic was the only path- 
way to deliverance. But neither one-tenth nor 
one-hundredth, as I have shown, is approxi- 
mating to the truth. 

The first objection to a Republic is Ulster. 
If Ireland secedes from the United Kingdom, 
it follows as the night follows the day that 
North East Ulster will secede from the United 
Ireland. Every Irishman knows this to be a 
fact and it is mere chicanery to blink the busi- 
ness. I have shown how the Dissentient vote 
in South Down for De Valera was only thirty 
out of about nine thousand. A Republic in 
Dublin means two Irelands, as distinct from 
one another as Sweden is distinct from Nor- 
way or as Belgium is distinct from Holland. 
If Ireland splits from England, Ireland splits 
herself. 

The main object of any statesmanlike policy 
. for Ireland should be surely to draw all sec- 



N 



IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 77 

tions of the people together and not to drive 
them yet further asunder. Sinn Fein has pro- 
ceeded on the opposite principle. By adopting 
a flag which is not merely green but also Papal 
in its colouring, a challenge to the death has 
been issued to Belfast and the North. And 
never has Ulster been more thoroughly aroused. 
The second objection to the Irish Republic 
is Canada. Ireland lies clean between the 
Dominion and Great Britain. If De Valera 
were to cross the Dominion frontier, he would 
be immediately arrested. Between the Irish 
and French Catholics of the Dominion, there 
is, I am assured, no political association. The 
United States is doubtless aware that the cam- 
paign against Britain which is raging here has 
had the effect of drawing the Dominion of 
^ Canada closer to the Mother Country, as al- 
ways, when she is attacked. 

The third objection is fiscal. If Ireland is 
to be independent, then England must also be 
allowed her independence. If Ireland is to put 
on tariffs against Great Britain, then it follows 
that Great Britain must have the right to put 
on tariffs against Ireland. I do not suggest 



78 THE IRISH CASE 

that Britain would ever treat Ireland as Serbia 
and her swine and pork were treated by Aus- 
tria Hungary. But Ireland has everything to 
, lose and nothing to gain by seeking to be put 
outside the customs union which gives her a 
free market at her very doors. It is all very 
well to think only of the sentimental side of 
these questions, but even in the case of Cuba, 
there were some very pointed negotiations over 
the admission of sugar into the- United States. 
. Vnd the Irish farmer would soon be complain- 
/ ing in real earnest if Britain were to take the 

Sinn Feiners at their word and were to compel 
^Ireland to depend on "herself alone." 

The wording of the Declaration is precise 
as to the Independence claimed. It is to be 

COMPLETE INDEPENDENCE 

with power to provide for future defence. In 
other words, Ireland claims the right to main- 
tain her own Army and Navy and to enter 
into her own relations with Foreign Powers, 
which, as in the case of Germany, may be at 
the moment in conflict with Great Britain and 
the United States. Ireland Is thus to be more 



IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 79 

free in her Foreign Relations than Belgium 
under her Treaty Guarantees. There is not 
a small nation in Europe that in fact enjoys 
such isolation and there is not a nation any- 
where that has adopted Selfishness like this 
as its national virtue. Nor has Ireland en- 
dorsed the Sinn Fein Claim. Ireland merely 
regards it as an amusing gesture of impatience. 
When a man says damn, he does not really 
want a fellow creature to go to the nether re- 
gions. He wishes to relieve his feelings. 

The reason why Britain will never consent 
to such a Declaration of Independence is that 
Ireland lies between the Old World and the 
New. She holds the key to the trade routes 
which connect the whole of Europe with the 
whole of America both north and south. The 
best argument possible against the demand of 
Sinn Fein is the conduct of Sinn Fein in in- 
\ iting German submarines into Irish harbours 
at a time when those submarines were being 
employed against the shipping of every mari- 
time power in both hemispheres and not least 
against American Shipping. When Sinn Fein 
hooted American troops and sailors and the 



8o THE IRISH CASE 

American flag in the streets of Cork, we saw 
a symbolic act which will never be forgotten. 
The American Flag was at that time being 
flown over the British Houses of Parliament. 
No Power, with a sense of responsibility would 
be worth the respect of its neighbours if it 
were to surrender the strategic centre of the 
modern world on the ocean to a small and 
divided nation in which there was an active 
movement afoot to employ that position as 
a means of pursuing a policy of confessed 
Selfishness and disregard for others. No one 
knows this better than Sinn Fein. The object 
of the Declaration of Independence is not to 
win assent. It is a document drafted for re- 
fusal. It is intended to create a new grievance 
in |f)lace of the others that have been removed. 
The world is being told that Ireland will never 
be content until she is placed in a position on 
the high seas to starve out England. This is 
the plain truth of the matter and the only 
reason for the demand is potential revenge. 
We have seen how openly the Declaration flouts 
the sensibilities of Ulster and we now see how 



IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 8i 

it is a calculated threat against Britain, France 
and Western Europe. 

In the case of the Commonwealth of Aus- 
tralia, the People insisted that no Islands 
should be in the hands of Germany which 
might and therefore would be used in the 
future to cut off the Commonwealth and New 
Zealand from the rest of the world. In the 
case of the Philippines, there was only the 
other day a discussion of the rumour that Japan 
was fortifying islands which lie between the 
United States and her Dependency. That dis- 
cussion was short and sharp. 

Some little time ago, De Valera indicated 
his readiness to discuss some form of Cuban 
Home Rule or independence. He was promptly 
disavowed by his Irish-American friends whose 
aims did not include a settlement'of the Irish 
Question on any lines until a new President 
had been elected to the United States. But 
I wish to say at once that British Statesman- 
ship does not exclude any path to conciliation 
however unlikely its route. • Even Independence 
as defined by Sinn Fein was carefully con- 



\ 



^2 . THE IRISH CASE 

v^idered by the British Cabinet before it was 
laid aside. 

•tuban Independence is defined by what is 
called the Piatt Amendment passed on the 12th 
of June, 1901. I think it well to give the 
ternis of this important instrument in full: 



-vie I 



(i) The Government of Cuba shall 

never enter into any Treaty or other com- 

-^ pact with any foreign Power or Powers 

which will impair or tend to impair the 

V Independence of Cuba, nor In any way 

authorise or permit any foreign Power 

or Powers to obtain by colonisation or 

for naval or military purposes, or other- 

\ \wise, lodgment or control over atiy por- 

-tion of said island. 

This clause would have been broken in the 
case of Ireland by the invitation to Casenfent 
an^ others to land with arms. The Clause is 
nianifestly incompatible with the terms of the 
Iri^ Declaration of Independence. 

(2) That said Government shall not 
assume or contract any public debt to pay 



^ 



IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 83 

the interest upon which, and to make rea- 
sonable sinking fund provision for the 
ultimate discharge of which the ordinary- 
revenues of the Island of Cuba, after de- 
fraying the current expenses of the Gov- 
ernment, shall be inadequate. 

This clause gives to the United States an 
ultimate control over the finances of Cuba. 

(3) That the Government of Cuba con- 
. sents that the United States may exercise 
i the right to intervene for the preservation 
*of Cuban Independence, the mamtenance 
of a Government adequate for the protec--' 
~ tion of life, property, and individual 
liberty, and for discharging the obliga- 
tions with respect to Cuba imposed by the 
■* Treaty of Paris on the United States*^ now, 
to be assumed and undertaken by the Gov- 
ernment of Cuba. 

This clause gives to the United States the 
\ right and indeed the obligation ta fulfil pre- 
cisely those duties to the indi vidua* which are 
fulfilled to-day in Ireland by the British au- 



84 THE IRISH CASE 

thority. If the Island of Cuba were to break 
up into two factions as Ireland is broken up, 
American intervention would follow as a mat- 
ter of course. 

(4) That all the acts of the United 
States in Cuba during the military occu- 
pancy of said island shall be ratified and 
held as valid, and all rights legally ac- 
quired by virtue of said acts shall be main- 
tained and protected. 

In other words, Cuba must not complain 
if the United States finds it necessary or ex- 
pedient to declare and administer martial law, 
as in Ireland. 

The next clause deals similarly with the 
duty of Cuba to apply sanitation in her cities, 
and therefore gives the United States a locus 
standi in the municipal affairs of the Island. 
Clause VI cuts out the Isle of Pines and so 
defines the boundaries of Cuba and Clause VII 
is in these terms: 

To enable the United States to main- 
tain the independence of Cuba, and to 



IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 85 

protect the people thereof, as well as for 
its own defence, the Cuban Government 
will sell or lease to the United States the 
lands necessary for coaling or naval sta- 
tions, at certain specified points, to be 
agreed upon with the President of the 
United States. 

In respect of Cuba, therefore, the United 
States has thus not only the right of military 
intervention, virtually when she pleases, but 
the right of permanent naval occupation where 
she pleases. These rights are exercised by the 
United States and would . be continued as 
rights, even if the Cubans objected. Rights 
essentially similar are imposed by the naval 
and military forces of the United States on 
the Island of Haiti and Santo Domingo. For 
a considerable period, the Haitians have been 
under arms against the marines of the United 
States and the acting President of the Haitian 
Republic is an Admiral of the United States 
Navy. 

In the attitude of the United States there 
lias been no trace of hypocrisy. When Panama 



86 THE IRISH CASE 

was wanted, Panama was taken. The Canal . 
SWas fortified and there was the end of it. And 

- in the terms of the Piatt Amendment, the 
United States makes it perfectly plain in the 
v'ery wording that the object of the military 
and naval provisions is "its own defence." 
Whose defence? Cuba's? Not at all. The 
phrase, its own defence, means the defence of 
thTtJnited States. Cuba is part of the strategic 
system on which the United States is to base 
what will be in a year or two the largest Navy ^ 

54|i the world. 
~ But Cuba does not lie on any essential trade 

_. route to or from the United States. If Cuba 
were in hostile hands, not a family in any 
American city would have to go on the rations . 
tliat my family suffered in Britain, owing to 
he depredations of the Irish — or rather the 
Sinn Fein — assisted submarines. Cuba does^ 
'hot lie at the throat of North America. If the 
TJnited States is so nervous over Cuba, what 
would she feel, if one night, Cuba were suj^er- 
imposed suddenly on Long Island and were 
then to start a claim for absolute independence ? ' 
>>^nd what would be the feelings — I will add th^ 



% 



IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 87 

language of American statesmen — if with the 

Catholics of Cuba, just outside New York so 

agitating, Great Britain were to receive the 

President of the Cuban Republic officially, 

were to supply his friends with funds and with 

rifles, were to give him honorary degrees^at 

< the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge aQ^. 

the Freedom of the City of London, and were 

finally to pass a Resolution in the House of 

Lords, with the assent of the Foreign Secre- 

_^ tary, corresponding in that body to Senator 

\, Lodge in Congress, recognising the Republic 

/V)f Long Island? 

. Would the language be any the less severe 

'^ if it were shown in addition that the Sinn 

, Feiners of Long Island had been arranging 

with Germany a combined operation in which 

V.-^ tiiey were to run a rebellion, while German 

I battleships were to raid Atlantic City as they 

raided the East Coast of England and while 

German aircraft were to raid New York and 

*^rop bombs on the homes of the people? That 

jvas what happened in Easter 1916 and in face 

of it, Britain is seriously asked by representa- 

'('■ i tive bodies in this country to surrender her 



\ 



r 



88 THE IRISH CASE 

Long Island with the adjacent waters to an 
Alliance with — which would mean the Su- 
zierainty of — any foreign Power who at the 
moment might be most anxious to starve our 
people into submission. 

If the United States were entirely blockaded, 
s\\Q would not be vitally inconvenienced. She 
has within her own borders all the food and 
materials essential to her existence. But if 
Britain were blockaded, she would cease to be. 
The parallel of Long Island is only valid to 
a full extent if you assume further that New 
York State and Pennsylvania and Massachu- 
setts also form an island, with the rest of the 
American mainland in the hands of foreign 
and possibly hostile Powers. 

But the United- States goes further. It is 
not for any Englishman to object to the 
Monroe Doctrine. That Doctrine was sug- 
gested to the statesmen of the New World by 
a British Minister, Canning, and was defended 
in Manila Bay by a British Fleet, at what 
risk we now know. But what is that Doctrine ? 
It is the assertion of what is no less a principle 
than an ultimate political suzerainty by the 



IS INDEPENDENCE CONCEIVABLE? 89 

United States over the entire South American 
continent. If North Americans do not realise , 
this, they may be assured that South American 
RepubHcs are fully aware of the position. Of 
this we have evidence in their sensitive » 
vigilance when the United States intervenes 
however gently and beneficently to ward off 
trouble between Peru, Chile and Bolivia over ,<^ 
Tacna and Arica. If there is to be a Monroe 
Doctrine to link Alaska with Cape Horn, is 
there to be no Monroe Doctrine to link Belfast 
with Glasgow? 

That concludes my main argument on tl!%K^^ 
question of Irish Independence but I think that 
possibly a few words should be added - in a 
new chapter on the right of a population to 
secede. 



VII 



IRISH PROPAGANDA IN THE UNITED >t 
STATES "*" 



iJIL 



BEGAN this book by admitting — I hope 
with due hlimility— that the great case 
of Ireland versus England was before the " 
■ 4 Jury m Public Opinion in the United States. 
Following the lead of Viscount Grey and his 
scT- successoj at the British Embassy in Washir»g- 
ton, Sir Auckland Geddes, I did not attempt 
to challenge the Jurisdiction of the Court. I 
look it for granted that Ireland is an inter- 
national question and that the United States, 
containing as it does many millions of Irish 
American citizens, would be particularly in- 
terested in its solution. All that I have asked 
is that the United States, as a High Court of 
Conscience on the conduct of Great Britain 
should hear the evidence before delivering the 
Verdict, 

90 



IRISH PROPAGANDA IN U. S. 91 

As a detached observer, it has sometimes 
. seemed to me that the Irishman who becomes 
an American citizen enjoys especial privileges 
over others amongst whom he lives. A Ger- 
man is told that he must be one hundred per 
cent. American. He must even fight against 
l)is fatherland when the call of duty comes. 
But the Irishman who is naturalised remains 
an Irishman nope the less. He becomes an 
-excellent citizen in the country of his adoption, 
, running the cities in the most approved style' 
_ and even finding time 'for charitable organiza- 
tions like Tammany Hall and the Knights of 
Columbus. But he is still a part of the Irish 
political system. 

So long as this situation helps Ireland on 
her upward path, I do Aot object at all."^*T!et 
us always hope that every small nation will 
always have hosts of such disinterested 
friends. If, however, it is a fact that the Irish- 
American is actually stirring up trouble in the 
old country, then it does seem as if some ex- 
planation were required. 

In the year 191 1, a Home Rule Bill was 
brought forward by the British Government 



♦92 THE IRISH CASE 

and what happened? It was accepted by the 
Irish NationaHst leaders who represented Ire- 
land, by Mr. Redmond and his colleagues, just 
as it would have been accepted by Parnell, had 
he.beeft alive. 

^ But the American Clan-Na-Gael at once sent 
a disapproving telegram, and' this was signed 
by six Judges- of the Supreme Courts of New 
York and New Jersey, by a Governor of Rhode 
Island, and by other dignitaries. I do not my- 
self know what is the character of the Clan- 
Na-Gael as a society for helping on human 
happiness but I may perhaps quote from The 

""Americana, which is, I believe, the latest thing 
in Encyclopedias and entirely American in 
origin. 
•In Volume VII, page 32, I read : 

"Clan-Na-Gael, Irish secret society, 
founded in the United States for the pur- 
pose of aiding in securing 'Home Rule' 
for Ireland. The Society has been charged 
with some grave crimes, said to have been 
perpetrated for the purpose of intimidating 
the British government ; but so little is 



IRISH PROPAGANDA IN U. S. 93 

really known about the workings of the 
organisation nothing positive can be as- 
' serted." 

Now if the Society was formed to help 
on Home Rule, why did it try to wreck Home 
Rul|r Were there men who feared that their 
occupation would be gone if Home Rule were 
granted and is this a reason possibly for the 
increased outcry about Ireland that arises as 
the project of Home Rule comes nearer to 
success? Is it as if the Anti Saloon League 
were to have asked, "Where shall we be, if 
and when the Saloons are closed?" ' ' 

Do the Irishmen in the United States really 
> want the Irishmen in Ireland to obtain satisfac- 
tion? Sometimes, I doubt it. 

When that Cablegram was sent, Germany 
was preparing her hardest for war. She was . 
well represented in this country and was doing 
her utmost to immobilise both Britain and 
the United States. A settlement of the Irish ^ 
Question would of course have interfered very 
jwuch with her plans. The Kaiser was making 
every possible enquiry how the various parts 



94 THE IRISH CASE 

of the British Empire would stand in the event ,- 
of war. He was lunching with Sir Edward 
Carson who represented the Ulster point of 
view. Was it wholly in the interests of Ire- 
land and freedom and humanity and the United 
^ates that the anti-Home Rule attitude was 
taken up in the New World by those who had \ 
' always been Home Rulers? I do not know.- 
But Americans must not be surprised if Eng- 
lislimen are asking the question. They are 
puzzled. 
■'T suppose that there is no country in the 
r(d that has done more than the United 
s to maintain the dignity of international 
l#vvr Living under a written constitution, 
American citizens feel the responsibility of 
defending scraps of paper whenever these may ' 
be torn up by the aggressor. This was wh]' '^ 
many Americans sympathised with the Cana- 
dians who without hesitation threw themselves 
into the fight for outraged and Catholic Bel- "^ 
gium. The United States was at the time a^ 
neutral and the question does arise whether 
international law applies to American citizens 
when they happen to be of Irish extraction. 




IRISH PROPAGANDA IN U. S. 95 

N^ Early In the year 191 7, a book was pub- 
lish^d here, entitled "History of the Sinn Fein 
Movement and the Irish RebelUon of 1916," by 
Francis P. Jones. This book should be legally 
exact and proper because it is honoured by 
an introduction by one of the most eminent-^ 

*' "jurists in the country, that is Judge Goff, , 
understood to be a warm supporter of the 
extreme Irish claim. From Chapter XXXVIII, 
I cull the following sentences: 

'^'^^ Page 239: . - 

"Some months before the rising, a message 

was despatched to Berlin asking for arms, and 

the German Government made the necessary 

arrangements to comply with the Irish re- 

^ quest." 

'^ # Page 240: 
/ "Casement was trusted implicitly and given 
^plenipotentiary powers in Germany where 
diplomatic relations were concerned." 

yPage 241 : 

"All that Germany was asked to do, as a 
matter of fact, was to send a consignment of 



96 THE IRISH CASE, - 

arms, ammunition, and machine guns, and that 
German submarines might also be of use." 

Page 242: 

^ "The request for the arms from Germany 
was, in the first place, brought to New York 
by messenger, since direct communication be- 
tween Ireland and Ber'in was impossible. The 
fact that this messenger was one of the signers 
of the proclamation of the Irish Republic is 
sufficient ffroof of his truthworthiness. This 
man brought the message to New York, and 
it was then referred to the officials of the Ger- 

'. man Government. By them it was forwarded 
as a matter of course to Berlin. Some weeks 
later the officials in New York received a mes- 

) sage from the Imperial Government to the 
.fff^t that the arms were being sent from Ger- 
many about April 12th and would be due in 
Ireland about Easter Sunday." 

The United States was then at peace with 
Britain. She was in fact neutral. Hundreds 
of thousands of Irishmen from all over the 
world were 'fighting for Liberty in Belgium and 



IRISH PROPAGANDA IN U. S. 97 

Serbia and i^ Turkey. What exactly will be* 
the condition of this troubled planet if every 
country allows its citizens to fomeflt civil strife 
in its neigh^bour's territoryj* Why should there 
be one rule for the' Irish-American and another 
rule for the rest of the law-abiding human 
race? In Britain, we also have judges, and 
they would have been engaged rather in sen- 
tencing to punishment any British subject who 
endeavoured to ct)mpass the death of fi^ndly 
nationals, against whom the country had not 
alleged any cause of quarrel, much less de- 
clared any kind of war. No country is more 
"jealous of its sovereignty than is the United 
States. Is it just that the United States while - 
insisting upon its own rights being respected 
should give to other and less favoured nations 

y _ - 

-'an example of lawless aggression? And ho>v 
^can the United States expect its own laws 
t9 be respected if there is h£ld up to the people 
an object lesson like the above? What dis- 
tinction can be drawn between the crinjie com- 
mitted by Zimmermann when he sought to stir 

/up Mexico against the United States and the 
irregularity of any American citizen however 



98. THE IRISH CASE 

learned and eloquent trying to stir up civil war 
in the United Kingdom ? The motive of course 
was in both cases the same. Germany was to 
/Tetain Belgium. 

This is a purely legal matter. If it was right 
of the Sinn Feiners over here to plot as the 
above book says that they did, then there is 
no- reason why any Power that is irritated 
with the United States should not return the 
Compliment. Official life everywhere can be 
made unbearable. Given money and a secret 
society and a mind devoted to revenge, it can 
r.lwa^ be done. You can buy trouble just as 
you<.can buy any other commodity. There are 
always people who will supply it at a price. 
But what the world would be like when, if<. 
ever, the rest of the world behaves as the ex- 
treme Irish-Americans behave, I can only 
imagine from my own experience. 

I remember that Easter. At the time, I was 
living in England. Our district was crowded 
with some of the half million Catholic Bel- 
gians whom we had rescued from a nameless 
fate. I had one in my house, a woman, broken 
in health, and separated for years from her 






IRISH PROPAGANDA IN U. S. 99 

husband. We had regarded Easter as a sacred 
season and although I am a Protestant, I called 
on the Parish priest and assured him that I 
would in no way interfere with the devotions 
of our refugee but would carry out any ar- 
rangement that the clergy desired. Bombs fell 
around us that Easter. But it did not occlir 
to me, I confess, that this festival had been 
selected for our attempted murder by vari- 
ous peoples speaking our language, also at 
peace with us, and still less by Catholic friends. 
The Irish Rebellion, the bombing of London 
and the shelling of the defenceless watering 
places on the East Coast, were part of a com- 
^>«bined ofifensive, which included ruthless war- 
yV fare on the high seas and Verdun. What 
France thinks of it is shown in the fierce in- 
dictment of M. R. C. Escouflaire, entitled 
-^'Ireland an Enemy of the Allies." M. Escouf- 
laire would doubtless think that my few words 
on the matter are colourless and inadequate. 
The fact is that I do not want to indict Ireland. 
I only wish to suggest that the Sinn Feiners 
in New York should surely have considered 
pvery alternative before allowing their cause 



•^ 



-* 



loo THE IRISH CASE 

■ tf> be stained as it has been by its German 
"^association, when Germany was at her very 
worst. 

Then as now an election was pending in the 
Jnited States, Then as now, thoughtless men 
y/ere, to use one of the many picturesque 
/hrases that we owe to the wit and humour 
of American writers, "playing politics." Now, 
playing politics may be as innocent a pastime 
as playing baseball ; but it depends. No coun- 
try has a moral right to play politics at the 
expense of its neighbours. Let American 
^, Trimaries play politics over Prohibition or 
'''over Women's Suffrage or over the Plumb 
Plan but to play politics over an air-raid on 
a friendly nation, to play politics on the tor- 
pedoing of merchantmen on the high seas, to 
play politics over a rebellion in a sovereign 
state against which there has been no declara- 
tion of war or even diplomatic protest, is trans- 
;,gressing the rules of international comity and 
■^is inviting international anarchy. Germany 
herself never assumed this latitude. And no 
interference by Lenin and Trotsky with the 
internal affairs of other countries has been 



IRISH PROPAGANDA IN U. S. loi 

more explicit or irregular, than the proceedings 
of some American institutions during the past 
half dozen years. 

It is no part of my case that the Orangemen 
have been easy to handle. Britaii/'ias had just 
as much trouble with them as with the other 
side. It was from Ulster that there came in." 
the first instance an appeal to force. There 
were Ulstermen who used criminal language 
about preferring Germany to a Parliament 
duly constituted at Dublin. There were even 
German weapons found in Ulster and Ulster 
did it first. It was the example of Ulster tha^ 
led Nationalist Ireland to "volunteer." The" 
treatment of the Catholic recruits, the disin- 
clination to promote Catholic officers, the blank 
refusal to mention Catholic Regiments and the 
silly objection to using Irish Nationalist sym- 
bols on the uniforms of the Regiments which 
they manned — all these were blunders which 
no one has admitted more frankly than Mr.> 
Lloyd George. They were due to the prejudice 
of the, British War Office and they were due 
especially to the sheer obstinacy of Lord 
Kitchener who had all the pigheadedness of 



I02 THE IRISH CASE 

a very great man. Every one of these matters 
was dealt with in the British ParUament and 
the British Parliament was the place where 
they should be dealt with. 

But you must remember that we were at 
war. Has the United States realised in the 
least what it was for a country of the size and 
population of Britain to raise, equip and sup- 
port on distant battlefields armies of six and 
one-half million men? We could not simply 
think of Ireland as if Ireland were the only 
country in the world. 



\ 



VIII 
THE DISORDERS IN IRELAND 

I HAVE now to deal fairly and frankly 
with the charge that Great Britain is com- 
mitting horrible outrages in Ireland. On 
^this matter, my position is this: 

I believe that there are only two ways of 
'governing an English Speaking Country. You 
rrtcfet-.either have a Parliament or you must 
ha^^e an Army. I am for a Parliament. And 
I am against such use of an Army. 
~"The American Clan-na-Gael says that no 
Parliament is possible unless Ireland is totally 
independent. By imposing such a condition, 
it mates a Parliament difficult to establish and 
so prolongs the rule of the Army. The object 
seems to be to keep Ireland under an Army 
and therefore discontented. Then there will 
continue to be a case against England. 

Now I am prepared to do two things — either 
103 



104 THE IRISH CASE 

one or the other. Here on my desk lie the 
materials for some very lurid writing. Part 
of this matter comes from the British Press 
and deals with events in Ireland. The Dailf 
News itself has dealt very faithfully with th^ 
Coercion of Ireland by Viscount French. 

If it is right for Americans to concentrate ' 
their minds on these incidents — the searches 
of dwellings in Fermoy and so forth — then it 
is right for English people to concentrate their 
minds on incidents perhaps more numerous and ' 
certainly more sensational, namely the burning 
alive of American citizens, in broad daylight, 
and without punishment of the perpetratorg^. 

Now, I can tell either of these stories or 

i 

I can tell both, but I am not going to teji otie" 
story without the other. I am not going to 
tempt Americans into the sad predicament pi 
the Pharisee when looking askance at the pub- 
lican, who being English had not adopted 
Prohibition, said: "God, I thank thee that 
I am not as other men are and especially this 
British soldier who after a companion had been "1 
shot in cold blood going to Church went about'* 
the place searching for fire-arms." 



THE DISORDERS IN IRELAND 105 

There is no country in the world where the 
law is enforced on occasion more fiercely than 
in the United States. There is no country less 
ijiclined to put up with insults to the national 
V fla^ or to threats on the national unity. There 
.was no war in history in which passion ran 
* higher than in the Civil War which established 
the union of the American Republic. 

There are certain problems which every na- 
tion must solve for itself. Even in the United 
States such domestic problems are numerous 
s and difficult. Burning down police stations 
and tearing up income tax returns are not acts 
which in themselves entitle to sympathy the 
f ' desperate extremists who, believing themselves 
^ immine from punishment, commit them. It 
coay be that such acts imply terrorism over 
» other less vocal and more law-abiding people. 
There is a contrast between the deeds of the 
few in Irelrnd and the votes of the many. 

As long as Ireland was being denied Home 
Rule and Land Reform and so on I confess 
frankly that I was one who had a good deal 
of secret sympathy with her various cam- 
, although I suppose that I shall lose 



io6 THE IRISH CASE 

what little reputation I still possess by saying 
so. But that position is now changed. 

After all, war is war. And De Valera has 
declared for war. And in this unhappy world 
you cannot have it both ways. You cannot 
refuse to sit in the House of Commons after 
election and announce a Republic and shoot 
policemen on duty and raise a Rebellion Loan 
and then whimper because someone searches 
for revolvers. If De Valera means business,^ 
he has to learn that Britain also means busi- 
ness. If he is merely a charlatan, then, what 
is to be said of those who are using him for 
their ulterior purposes? /- 

Let us suppose that the Congressmen of 
Ohio, duly elected by the voters, were to be, 
influenced by the general wave of world unrest 
and were to refuse to take their seats at the 
Capitol at Washington. Let us further sup- 
pose that they met in a room and accused 
the United States of force and fraud and de- 
clared their independence. Let us add to ,the 
picture the fluttering of their own' flag in place 
of the Stars and Stripes. Then, put^in a few 
attempts at assassination and an Independent 



THE DISORDERS IN IRELAND 107 

Ohio Loan floated In London. Are you quite 
certain that the American Doughboy would 
under those interesting circumstances play a 
more polite part than the British Tommy plays 
in Ireland? At Albany, Five Members are 
^ excluded apparently because they belong to the 
' -International Labour Party, whatever that may 
he, When King Charles tried to exclude five 
of our members from Westminster, we cut off 
his head. What would be done here if mem- 
bers were deliberately raising the country 
/' against the Federal Authority? Would there 
> ht much worry if in prison they went on 
hunger strike? And in London, you had the 
extraordinary spectacle of the police defending 
an Irish Sinn Fein meeting from the populace 
on the ground that free speech even against 
the King's own sovereignty must be safe- 
'guarded! 

War is war and I am not surprised that 
the Irish in the United States or some of them 
are trying to Include In their strategy the battle- 
fields of India and Persia and Egypt. The 
- British Empire is far too big nowadays to be 
in a position to complain of the attention de- 



io8 THE IRISH CASE 

voted to its problems by the steadily expanding 
United States. There must be points of con- 
tact multiplying everywhere. But let me say 
this. Britain is doing what she can to solve 
in these countries the most difficult problem 
ever undertaken by modern statesmanship. 
This problem is none other than the introduc- 
tion of western ideas of liberty into the eastern 
mind and the eastern societies. Millions of 
men and women, indeed hundreds of millions, , 
who have their own lives to live and care notli- \ 
ing for the party politics whether of the United 
States or of Britain will owe the happiness or 
tjie misery of generations to the spirit now dis- 
played towards their institutions. Let the ^ 
United States study the question. If Britain 
fails over it, the United States will have to 
-solve it in years to come. But there is all the 
^ difference between study and incendiarism. 
For responsible American Citizens to aid and 
^abet revolution in Ireland is improper. For 
them to aid and abet revolution in India in 
•v^rder to force England's hands, as they think, 
in Ireland, is surely worse than a mere im- 
propriety. With regard to India and similar 



THE DISORDERS IN IRELAND 109 

countries, there are two consistent policies and 
only two for the United States to pursue, and 
the first is to take a mandate, say, over Turkey ; 
whife the second is to keep silent while others 
act as mandatory. To refuse responsibility 
\Vhile continuing to criticise is Kfeerely to add to 
the dangers and troubles of a perilous time 
without making a, contribution to their 
amelioration. . 



IX 

THE ARGUMENT ON SECESSION 

WHEN a man owes the better part of 
himself to another country, and all 
that makes life worth living, it will 
be readily understood that he has no desire 
to deal controversially with any little differ- 
ences that may arise between his own and any 
section of his wife's people. This is one reason 
why I have merely proceeded on the path of 
fact and law, of a fair deal both for Ireland 
and for England. 

In the year 1776 the American colonies 

/ seteded from the British Empire. This means 

'■""•Hhat there is undoubtedly a right among na- 

% tions of Secession. The Ten Tribes seceded 

"N*,^ from Judah and Benjamin. The South Ameri- 

jcan Republics seceded from the Latin Mon- 

■ ^archies in Europe. And the Austro-Hungarian 

Empire now consists entirely of Secessions. 

/^ no 



THE ARGUMENT ON SECESSION in 

But there is also a right to refuse Secession. 
Some years ago, a Breton exile in London 
called on me and I asked him why he did not 
return to France. The reason was that he 
belonged to a Party that wants an independent 
Brittany and he had therefore quarrelled with 
the French Government. He was in fact the 
De Valera of the Breton National Movement. 
Any little compliments paid by Ireland to Eng- 
land were colourless beside the lurid tributes 
which this man paid to the tyranny of Paris. 
Yet no one, I think, would suggest that it would 
be reasonable to expect France to give inde- 
pendence to Brittany. 

. The right to refuse Secession like so many 
other fundamental political principles was es- 
tablished by the genius and the sacrifices of 
the United States. The War with Britain 
in the Eighteenth Century was a serious affair 
but it was a skirm.ish compared with the ter- 
rible Civil War which followed in the Nine- 
teenth Century. For over four years, the Con- 
federacy fought to the death for the unre^- 
stricted right of Secession as claimed by Ire- 
land or rather by a few Irishmen to-day. The 



112 THE IRISH CASE 

Federal authority overcame this revolt by 
methods fully as severe as, and incomparably 
more costly than any that have been applied 
in Ireland since the Union. ' 

There were in Britain at that time many 
men who agreed with Gladstone that Jefferson 
Davis had created a nation. I can speak with 
the more freedom on the matter because the. 
paper which I represent in this country, The ' 
Daily News of London, which Charles Dickens 
had just founded with the help of John Bright^* 
supported the policy of Abraham Lincoln 
through thick and thin, when most journals 
went the other way. During those four years, 
we had our elections and the Cotton Famine 
in Lancashire made the Civil War a grave issue 
among our people. For the starving operatives 
who stood loyally by the North when it meant 
penury to do so, this was no question ot 
speeches. It was a matter of bread and butter. 
Yet during the whole of that struggle, the 
diplomacy of Britain was admittedly irre- 
proachable except in one particular. This was 
the exploits of the Alabama and for these 
we afterwards apologised and paid damages, 



THE ARGUMENT ON SECESSION 113 

at the very instance of Gladstone who had at 
first sympathised most strongly with the South. 

The .position to-day is that while Great 
Britain is ready and eager to see Ireland accept 
all that Ireland has ever asked except sovereign 
independence, Great Britain says what Lincoln 
Said years ago, that she will fight rather than 
concede the disunion of the United Kingdom. 
In other words and for the same reason, the 
unity of the United Kingdom is as sacred a 
thing as the unity of the United States is sacred 
to American citizens. If we «are wrong, then 
Lincoln was wrong. We simply say what he 
said that the United Kingdom cannot be a 
house divided against itself. 

Indeed, our case is if anything the stronger. 
There is no doubt that the North was forcing 
on the South a tremendous social change and 
without compensation. In every matter except 
independence we are doing exactly what our 
Irish friends are asking us to do. So far from 
impoverishing Ireland, Britain is as I have 
shown doing the precise opposite. 

Under these circumstances, is the case of 
Ireland sufficiently clear to warrant American 



114 THE IRISH CASE 

intervention? Sinn Fein says "Yes." At 
Washington, there was recently a deputation 
which signaHsed its wisdom by giving the loud- 
est cheer of the afternoon to talk about war 
with England. Of course, it takes two to make 
a quarrel and Britain does not intend to be 
one of them. Her answer to this criminal 
language is to reduce her Navy to a standa^rd 
which will be below that of the United States 
when her present programme is complete. 

^ndeed, Britain has endeavoured to show 
courtesies to the great Republic of the West. 
Over her Parliament House, on the Fourth of 
July, which has not been regarded hitherto 
as a specifically English festival, she has flown 
the Stars and Stripes. In her War Parade, 
she gave precedence to the American Army. 
No visitor to our Shores ever was greeted as 
the President of the United States was greeted, 
and for the reason that he was President. 
Americans have responded by a more than 
usually cordial reception to the Prince of 
Wales. And from my own experience I can 
testify to the unwearying hospitality of Ameri- 
cans of all classes and all racial origins. Kind- 



THE ARGUMENT ON SECESSION 115 

liness to the stranger is as the very air that 
men breathe in this young and vigorous 
democracy. 

The recognition of the Irish Republic seems 
hardly in tune with the real American note 
of men like Roosevelt. The right of asylum 
is one thing. We allowed the right of asylum 
to Kossuth and to Kropotkin. But it is a 
very different matter wlien official bodies add 
an official sanction to rebellion In another State. 
It if. widely believed in Great Britain that dis- 

^ order in Ireland would disappear to-morrow 
in faA^or of the Constitutional movement if it 
were not for the assistance of American sub- 
sidies. Many British believe that Ireland is 
being kept in a turmoil by American money 

' (though at the ultimate expense of Britain) 
until a new President is safely elected to the 
White House. Then the funds, they think, 
will cease. 

Let Americans put themselves for a moment 
in the position of a man like myself whose duty 
it is to defend their democratic institutions 
before the Old World. I believe in popular 

"'government and want to see others adopt it. 



v^ 



ii6 THE IRISH CASE 

But if popular government is to be extended, 
it must not be compromised. Under democ- 
racy, there must be the same courtesy among 
nations as there once was among kings. In- 
deed, the courtesy ought to be the more punc- 
tilious because of the fact that an offence to 
hundreds of miUions of people is harder to 
wipe out than an offence to a small and 
pri\^leged class. 

The action of Congress towards Ireland is 
perhaps worth narrating. On March 4th, 19 19, 
the House of Representatives passed the fol- 
lowing Resolution: 

That it is the earnest hope of the Con- 
♦ gress of the United States of America 
that the Peace Conference now sitting in 
Paris and passing upon the rights "^of the 
various peoples will favorably consider the 
claim of Ireland to self-determination. 

"^Who would imagine from that form of 
words that there were two Irelands, equally 
self-determined and that for years, Great Bri- 
tain had been seeking a way of reconciling the 



THE ARGUMENT ON SECESSION 117 

said self-determinations with a view to uniting 
Ireland for absolutely the first time in her his- 
tory so far as her history can be traced ? 

On June 6th, 19 19, the Senate passed the 
following Resolution with but one dissentient: 

^ That the Senate of the^tJnited States 
earnestly requests the American Plenipo-^ 
tentiary Commissioners at Versailles»to en- 
deavour to secure for Eamonn De Valera, 
Arthur Griffiths, and^Count George Noble 
Plunkett, a hearing before the said Peace 
' ' Conference, in order that they may present 
the case of Ireland, and resolved further, 
that the Senate of the United 'States ex- 
presses its sympathy with the aspirations 
of the Irish People for a Government of 
Jts own choice. 

Who would suppose from this resolution 
that the Sinn Feiners mentioned were opposed,^ 
to the claims of the entire industrial area of 
Ireland; and if they were to be heard, why 
did the Senate as representing a nation not 
devoid of Protestantism forget also and with 



ii8 THE IRISH CASE 

impartiality to ask for the same hearing fot 
Sir Edward Carson as was demanded for the 
other side? And why was it not mentioned 
that the place where the Sinn Feiners had a 

. right to be heard was the House of Commons, 
(hat their seats there were available at any time, 
and that they had been invited in addition to 

:, the Irish Conference and had refused to come? 
The interference of the Senate is not so much 
resented for its own sake as because it was an 
inequitable interference. It did not hold the 
balance even. It simply dismissed some mil- 
lions of Irish as of no importance and it so 
dismissed them because they happened to be 
in the main of the Protestant Faith. This is 
the view of the average level headed English- 
man. I admit that the Orangemen are being 
paid back in their own coin. They have ob- 
stinately resisted a settlement when a settle- 
ment was possible. They have clung to an 
indefensible Ascendancy and have refused to 
give to the Catholics of Belfast the position in 
the City to which by numbers the Catholics are 
entitled. There has been bigotry on the one 
side and there has been bigotry on the other. 



THE ARGUMENT ON SECESSION 119 

But the Senate is one of the most august legis- 
lative bodies in the world and is it the desire 
of any far-sighted American citizen, be he 
Protestant or Catholic, to see the . Protestawfe 
Ascendancy in Ireland succeeded by a clerical 
Ascendancy of any kind elsewhere? The ^im 
should be ratlier to persuade men of all re- 
ligious convictions to live together as citizens 
and as friends. 

Finally, we have had on the i8th of March, 
1920, a Reservation to the Treaty, proposed 
by Senator Gerry of Rhode Island, in the fol^- 
lov/ing terms: 

The United States adheres to the prin- 
ciple of self-determination and to the res- 
olution of sympathy with the aspirations 
of the Irish People for a government of 
their own choice and declares that when 
self-government is attained by Ireland — 
a consummation it is hoped is at hand — 
it should promptly be admitted as mem- 
ber of the League of Nations. 

This resolution, so it was explained in the 



^i20 THE IRISH CASE 

pres's, was really brought in so as to make it 
easier for certain votes to be given against the 
Treaty and the other more serious Reserva- 
tions, "which means that it was part of a subtle 
a/id fcomplicated political game. Can you im- 
agine Tiow difficult it was to explain this to 
Gf«a^t Britain on the other side? How could 
the explanation be given without doing infinite 
damage to the prestige of the Senate and there- 
fore to the prestige of the great country for 
wHieh the Senate is privileged to speak? And 
in Ireland, how could it be supposed by a 
romantic and enthusiastic people that the 
Re3«q^ation was merely a piece of tactics? ^ It 
was Actually being suggested that a Te Deunf 
sfpuld be sung in every Church in Irel^d 
over this ingenious chicanery of the division 
lobby. 
^ I do not feel that I am called upon to ex- 
press with regard to this matter any opinion 
of my own. The leading article of the New 
York Sun, appearing on March 19th, 1920, was 
as follows: 



V 

THE ARGUMENT ON SECESSION 121 ' 

Self-Determination in Ireland, Alaska and V 
Elsewhere! 

One of the last incidents of the loQig 
discussion which has resulted in the^second 
refusal by the United States Senate, to 
ratify Mr. Wilson's treaty and covenant, 
with or without reservations is so dis- 
creditable to the Senators responsiblcv for 
it that this newspaper cannot refrain from 
expressing its opinion on the subject. 
The Gerry reservation adhering to the 
~ principle of self-determination and to the 
resolutions of sympathy for the Irish na.- 
tionalists passed by the Senate last June 
was adopted on Thursday by the narrow: 
vote of 38 to 36 and thus became part 
of the treaty and covenant which ^le Sej^- 
"ate rejected on Friday. 

The attempted injection of the Irish 

' question into the treaty is pure buncombe. 

This is equally true, whether the purpose 

was merely political with a view to local 

. exigencies in the case of those voting for 



122 THE IRISH CASE 

the reservation, or strategic on the part 
of the so-called Irreconcilables in order to 
make the final rejection of the treaty more 
certain. 

We are not criticising the Gerry reser- 
vation on the ground that it declared sym- 
pathy for the cause of independence for 
Ireland. If such sympathy is entertained 
by the Congress of the United States an 
expression of it is perfectly legitimate and 
fully in accord With historic precedent. 
That was the case with the resolution of 
^ June 6, 19 1 9. But to reiterate that 

y legitimate declaration in the form of a 
projSosed treaty engagement which the 
British Government was expected Either 
to accept or to reject was to throw to the 
li^inds all pretence of non-interference in 
the domestic affairs of foreign nations and 
to essay an impertinence oi' meddling the 
.. extent of which can be understood best 

- by a supposition which the news of yester- 
day suggests. 

Paris reported yesterday that it had 

.^-piizked up a wireless despatch from Mos- 



/ 



/ 



THE ARGUMENT ON SECESSION 123 

cow saying in substance that the popula- 
tion of Alaska is now seeking to break 

^way from the United States and set up 
a Bolshevist government. It is not neces- 
sary to inquire too closely into the inherent 
probabilijty of this announcement from the 
headquarters of Lenine and Trotzky. Let 
us assume that it is true, merely for the 

' -sake of the illustration. 
• Suppose, then, that the people of 
Alaska, a Territory of the United States 
formerly belonging to Russia, were in fact 

desirous of separating themselves from 
this Government, and, on the principle of 
self-determination, aiming to opganize and 

-establish a Soviet Republic independent 

. of Washington. 

Suppose that a treaty shaping irrterna- 
tional relations between Great Britain, and 
the United States was in process of con- 
clusion and that the British Government, 
with the great interest in the future of 
Alaska inspired by the contiguity of tliat 
American Territory with the Dominion 
of Canada along a boundary of fifteen 



J, ■' 



I2/> 



THE IRISH CASE 



« hundred miles, should insert in the treaty 
>ja deinand for the independence of Alaska 
on the principle of self-determination. 

What would the United States think of 
that method of interference With our 
domestic concerns in the name of ^self- 
determination? Would the supposed; 
Alaskan clause in the supposed Anglo- 
American treaty meet on this sid^ of the 
Atlantic a calm and philosophic considera-^ 
tion on its merits, detached from all na- 
tional emotions, or would it raise through- 
out this Republic a storm of patriotic in- 
dignation .imperilling the friendship of 
the two countries? ^- <- 

In self-determination by treaty enaet-^ 
ment, as iri other matters, ib is ■w^mighty 
poor rule that doesn't work both ways. 

Senator Lodge was quite right in his 
unsuccessful effort to eliminate from the 
reservations any general indorsement or 
approval of the principle of self-de- 
termination. It is an attractive phrase, 
worked by Woodrow Wilson for all that 
it was worth for his own self-determined 



/ 



THE ARGUMENT ON SECESSION 125 

purposes, but it will not quite wash in the 
great American tub. Self-determination 
in Alaska, for example, as in the c^e sup- 
posed? Self-determination in Porto Rico? 
Sel"f -determination in Panama? Self- 
determination in Hawaii ? Self-determina- 
. tien, in the Wilsonian sense, in any terri- 
tory Of protected adjunct of the American 
. Government? It is as imposs.ible as self- 
, determination for an American State ; and 
the right even of sovereign Statehood to 
set up separately was settled, so far as this 
Republic is concerned, fifty-five years ago 
next month. 

It is not pnly Haiti an^ the Philippines that 
are in question. ^ By far the most serious prob- 
lem before the American People to-day is after 
all the Negro Problem. Since I lived in this 
country I have come to realise the immensity 
of that quiet but constant racial struggle^ I 
do not consider that I am under any necessity 
whatever of replying to an American Jury, 
greatly as I recognise the importance of that 
tribunal, on the disorders which have occa- 



126 THE IRISH CASE 

sionally broken out in certain areas of Ireland. 
As long as it is true that within a few years 
thousands of lynchings have taken place in 
this country, often accompanied by incidents 
of indescribable horror, I must tell Americans " 
plainly and I hope courteously that the outcry 
over hunger-strikes in Ireland or over the 
Sheehy Skeffington miscarriage of Justice, bad 
though that was, merely causes the cynic on 
both sides of the Atlantic to smile. There was 
a great Teacher Who said : 

Judge not that ye be not judged. For^ 
with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be 
judged; and with what measure ye mete, 
it shall be measured to you again. And 
why beholdest thou the mote that is in 
thy brother's eye, and considerest not the 
beam that is in thine own eye? Or how 
wilt thou say to thy brother. Let me pull 
out the mote out of thine own eye; and, 
beiiold, a beam is in thine own eye ? Thou 
""hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of 
- " thine own eye; and then shalt thou see 



THE ARGUMENT ON SECESSION 127 

clearly to cast out the mote that is in thy 
brother's eye. 

I have often felt the force of those verses 
when I have been tempted to magnify such 
little faults as there may still be in the United 
States. 

^ Between the ist of May, 19 16, and the 31st 
of December, 1919, there were reported in 
Ireland 1529 Sinn Fein outrages. There were 
20 rriurders. There were 589 robberies. There 
were 70 incendiary fires. And there was a 
balance of minor offences. 

Were thfese kindly and Christian acts ? Was 
it this sort of thing that Archbishop Hayes 
intended to ertcourage when with honest and 
sincere sympathy for the oppressed he sub- 
vscribed to the De Valera Loan? What about 
jhe large body of assassins who lined the road 
and fired volley after volley of shot into the 
car where Viscount French was sitting un- 
ndoved? What exactly would be said in this 
/country if the Governor of some State, dis- 
turbed by a strike of angry workers smarting 
^ under a sense of grievance, were to be thus 



/ 



128 THE IRISH CASE 

fusilladed in broad daylight by men applauded 
for their policy by the British Parliament and 
claiming the authority of the Archbishop of 
Canterbury? Once you begin to turn this 
matter around the other way you see at 
once how amazing it is. I am quite certain 
that many persons have subscribed to the Sinn 
Fein Funds from the most excellent motives 
and probably under the most explicit guaran- 
tees. But there is a good deal to be said for 
countries minding their own business. After 
all, how can anyone in this country really in- 
form himself of what is going on behind the 
scenes on the other side? 
• The St. Patrick's Day Parade in which Gov- 
ernor Smith and Mayor Hylan and the Arch- 
bishop and Mr. De Valera reviewed the proces- 
sion was of course a religious celebration 
against which no one has a right to take objec- 
ti9n. But it must not be supposed that in 
Ireland the occasion was always an act of 
spiritual devotion as it is in the United States. 
I could not help contrasting the scene outside 
St. Patrick's Cathedral, with the grim realities 
of Sinn Fein in Ireland, the masked bands of 



THE ARGUMENT ON SECESSION 129 

assassins, sparing not the husband before the 
wife or the mother before the children. Of 
course, in the case of the Mayor of Cork, who 
was done to death, there are two theories. The 
one is that he met his terrible fate immediately- 
after being turned out with others from the 
inner counsels of the local Sinn Fein Move- 
ment. The other is the theory of the Coroner's / 
Jury that the murderer \va< Mr. Lloyd George. ' 
Well, I am content to leave it at that, only 
adding this suggestion that it is not the height 
of wisdom for those of us who live at a dis- 
tance to interfere in a matter so obscure and 
so desperate. 

It is no part of my case to deny that the 
funds raised in the United States for the forces 
of disorder in Ireland and the rifles of foreign 
manufacture which arc found in Ireland or 
going there, have somewhat aggravated the 
anxieties of the British Government at a time 
when upon no Government in the history of 
the world has there been laid under Providence 
a more tremendous responsibility. Many of us 
had hoped that the United States with her 
incomparable colonial record in the Philippines 



130 THE IRISH CASE 

and her simply perfect educative missions in 
Turkey would have seen her way to undertake 
the problem which she is best fitted to solve 
5bnd which she perhaps can only solve — namely 
the reorganisation of the Ottoman territories 
and especially of Armenia. That was not ap- 
parently to be and what happened? Britain 
^as being harassed in Ireland. She was being 
harassed in India by the Friends of Indian 
Freedom in the United States which is in close 
association with the Friends of Irish Freedom. 
From Armenia, she had in consequence to with- 
draw her troops. A million Armenians had 
bkjcn slain already. Thousands more were 
butchered, including scores of girls, rescued 
from Turkish slavery and domiciled in the 
American Mission at Marash, which was burnt 
to the ground. To Sinn Fein, meaning Our- 
selves alone, what does an Armenian girl in a 
Protestant orphanage matter ? Shp matters no 
more than a Catholic nun in a Belgian Convent. 
She matters no more than the poor Belgian 
woman in my house trembling under a rain 
of German bombs. A murdered Armenian 
maiden does not vote. ^^ 



THE ARGUMENT ON SECESSION 131 

I repeat — the Irish extremists are tre- 
mendous-' agitators. I doubt whether in the 
liistory of the world there have been such con- 
summate politicians. But these are days when 
we stand, not at the ballot box merely^ not at 
the ^Joapbox either. We stand, every one of us, 
lit the judgment throne of the Almighty. And 
in the last day, it will be no answer to that 
tribunal and its questions, for us to say, "But 
^Vv-fe had-^to get the Irish Vote!" for ourselves ' 
alone. 

Seldom if ever in the history of nations has 
there been a spectacle quite like the campaign 
now being waged in the United States for 
trouble with the United Kingdom. A great 
outburst of genuine friendship from Britain 
to the United States was flung back in her 
face as a thing of naught. There is however 
a silent splendid soul in the heart of the United 
States which tolerates much that it deplores. 
It is a soul which says that here after all is '»' 
a nation in the making. Here is a nation the 
full fruition of whose splendid destiny is fore- 
shadowed by the very embarrassments of a 
mingled population. In the making of the 



/ 



132 THE IRISH CASE 

nation that is to be, Catholic and Protestant 
must play their part, each stimulating the other. 
And Irishmen and Scotsmen must here find at 
last their common denominator. The gravest 
aspect of the Irish agitation is not after all 
the danger that it may prevent, as it is intended 
to prevent, a settlement in Ireland. What then ? 
If a settlement in Ireland is prevented, it fol- 
lows that sectarian differences will be fomented 
in the United States. They who speak the 
English language and who should be teaching 
all that the English language means to those 
whose parents have had it not, will be working 
not with each other but in rival camps. There 
is not a line of this little plea for reason and 
justice towards Ireland and England which is 
not also a plea as from a devoted admirer and 
friend of the United States, for the noble op- 
portunity of world wide influence that lies be- 
fore the Republic of the West. 



APPENDIX A 

THE HOME RULE BILL— SUMMARY OF 
ITS PROVISIONS 

(These Appendices are quoted by permission from 
the May Number of Current Opinion) 

The Irish Home Rule bill, which passed its sec- 
ond reading in the House of Commons by a vote of 
348 to 94 on March 31, contains the following 
provisions : 

I. Two Parliaments — On and after the ap- 
pointed day there should be established a Parlia- 
ment of Soutnern Ireland and a Parliament of 
Northern Ireland, each consisting of the King and 
a House of Commons. No Second Chambers. 

Northern Ireland consists of the Parliamentary 
counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, 
Londonderry and Tyrone, and the Parliamentary 
boroughs of Belfast and Londonderry. The rest is 
Southern Ireland. 

II. The Council — i. The Council of Ireland, to 
be constituted as soon as may be after the appointed 
day, to bring about harmonious action between the 
Parliaments, to promote mutual intercourse ajid uni-. 
formity in matters affecting all Ireland, and to ad- 
minister services mutually agreed upon or assigned 
to it by this act. 

133 



134 THE HOME RULE BILL 

2. The Council, in the first instance, to be the 
King, as President, and twenty members of each 
House of Commons, chosen as each house may de- 
termine; this to be the first business of each House 
of Commons. 

3. The Constitution of the Council may be varied 
by identical acts of the two Parliaments, which may 
provide for all or any of its members to be elected 
by Parliamentary electorate. 

HL Parliament for All Ireland — i. The two 
Parliaments by identical acts may establish in lieu 
of the Council of Ireland a Parliament for the 
whole of Ireland, consisting of the King and one or 
two houses. The whole Constitution of this Parlia- 
ment as to members, mode of election or appoint- 
ment, and, if there are two Houses, their relations to 
one another, are to be determined by the Provincial 
Parliaments. The date at which the Parliament of 
Ireland is to be established is afterward referred to 
as the date of Irish union. 

2. On the date of Irish union the Parliament of 
Ireland receives the powers of the Council, all mat- 
ters which at that date cease to be reserved under 
this act and any powers conferred by the Provincial 
Parliaments. 

3. All the powers of the Provincial Parliaments 
pass to the Parliament of Ireland, except so far as 
the constituent acts otherwise provide, and, if no \ 
powers are reserved, the constituent acts must settlfc 
financial relations between the Exchequers. 

4. If any powers are reserved at first they may be 
transferred by identical acts later, when the Pro- 
vincial Parliaments would cease to exist. 



THE HOME RULE BILL 135 

Legislative Authority 

IV. Reserved Powers — i. The Provincial Parlia- 
ments have full powers within their respective areas, 
except in respect of: 

(i) Crown succession, &c, 

(2) Peace or war or matters arising from a 
state of war, or the regulation of the conduct 
of subjects toward hostilities between foreign 
States. 

(3) Navy, army, pensions, &c. 

(4) Treaties of foreign relations or rela- 
tions with the Dominions, extradition, or the 
return of fugitive offenders. 

(5) Dignities or titles of honour. 

(6) Treason, naturalization, aliens, &c. 

(7) Trade external to the area (except as 
affected by the powers of taxation given or 
agencies for the improvement or protection of 
trade), export bounties, quarantme or naviga- 
tion, except inland waters. 

(8)» (9). (10) and (11) Cables, wireless, 
aerial navigation, lighthouses, &c. 

(12) and (13) Coinage measures, trade 
marks, copyrights, patents, &c., and 
^ ? (14) Any matter reserved by this act. 

, ^' V. Religious Freedom — i. This clause forbids 
cither Parliament to make a law "so as either di- 
rectly or indirectly to establish or endow any re- 
- "Hgion or prohibit or restrict the free exercise 
titcreof or give a preference, privilege, or advantage 
or impose any disability or disadvantage on account 
of religious belief." 



\ 



\ 



136 THE HOME RULE BILL 

VI. Conflict of Laws — i. The Irish Parlia- 
ments have no power to repeal or alter any act 
passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom 
after the appointed day, though it deal with a mat- 
ter with respect to which they have power to make 
laws. 

2. Where an act of either Irish Parliament con- 
flicts with an Imperial act, it is void so far as it 
conflicts. 

Vn. Provision for Private Bills — This clause 
assigns to the Council of Ireland power of private 
bills legislation affecting both areas. 

Vni. Executive Authority — The executive 
power and prerogative of the Crown are vested in 
the Lord Lieutenant, and are to be exercised through 
such departments as may be established by each 
Provincial Parliament. ''The Lord Lieutenant may 
appoint officers to administer those departments, and 
those officers shall hold office during the pleasure of 
the Lord Lieutenant." The heads of departments 
and such others as the Lord Lieutenant may appoint 
are the Provincial Ministers. 

A Provincial Minister must be a member of the 
Privy Council of Ireland, must not hold office more 
than six months unless he is or becomes a member 
of the Provincial House of Commons, and if he is 
not the head of a department, holds office during 
the pleasure of the Lord Lieutenant, in the same 
manner as the head of a department. 

The Provincial Ministers form an Executive Com- 
mittee of the Privy Council of Ireland, called the 
Executive Committee of Northern or Southern Ire- 
land, to advise the Lord Lieutenant in the exercise 
of his executive powers in the province. 



THE HOME RULE BILL 137 

In the exercise of executive power there should 
be no religions privilege or disability, except where 
the nature of the case involves it. 

The seat of government in each province is to be 
determined by the province. 

"Irish services" in each province include all civil 
government, except as restricted or reserved by this 
act. 

IX. Police, Appointment of Justices — i. The 
Royal Irish Constabulary and the Metropolitan 
Police, and the administration of acts relating 
thereto, including the appointment and the removal 
of magistrates, are reserved until transferred by 
Order in Council to the Provincial Parliaments, but 
not longer than three years after the appointed day. 
If transferred after the date of Irish union, how- 
ever, they go to the Government of All Ireland, 
unless otherwise provided by the constituent acts. 

2. While reserved, these forces are controlled by 
a representative appointed by each Provincial Gov- 
ernment and a third appointed by the Crown, "and 
that body shall have such powers in relation to the 
maintenance of law and order in Ireland as his 
Majesty in Council may by order determine." 

3. The postal service, post office, and trustee sav- 
ings banks, postal or revenue stamps and the Pub- 
lic Record Office of Ireland are reserved until the 
date of Irish union, when, so far as they are within 
the powers of the Irish Parliament, they are to be 
transferred to the Government of Ireland. They 
are, however, to be transferred before the date of 
Irish union to the Council of Ireland if the two Pro- 
vincial Parliaments so provide by identical acts. 

4. The general subject matter of the Land Pur- 



138 THE HOME RULE BILL 

chase act is reserved until transferred by an im- 
perial act of Parliament, but the reservation does 
not include the powers of the Congested Districts 
Board, with a financial exception, nor does it in- 
clude the powers of the Irish Land Commission as 
to the collection and recovery of prrchase annuities. 
X. Powers of the Irish Council — i. The Pro- 
vincial Parliaments, by identical acts, may delegate 
any of the provincial powers to the Council. 

2. The powers of the Imperial Parliament over 
railways, including legislation, are transferred to 
the Irish Council. 

3. The Council has various deliberative and ad- 
visory functions as to the welfare of both provinces, 
including the recommendation of identical acts to 
delegate desirable powers from the Provincial Par- 
liaments to the Council. 

4. Orders of the Council of a legislative character 
are to be presented to the Lord Lieutenant for the 
Royal assent as if they were bills. 

The Two Parliaments 

XI and XII. A Session Every Year — There 
must be a session every year with less than twelve 
months between summons, prorogation and dissolu- 
tion by the Lord Lieutenant. Royal assent to bills 
is to be given by the Lord Lieutenant subject to 
instructions from the Crown and reservations, if 
directed by the Crown, for the direct Royal assent. 

XIII. Number of M. P.'s : P. R. Elections— The 
House of Commons of Southern Ireland to have 128 
members and that of Northern Ireland to have 52. 

General elections by proportional representation, 
single transferable vote. 



THE HOME RULE BILL 139 

The term of each Parliament is to be five years, 
unless sooner dissolved. After three years from the 
first meeting each Parliament may alter the whole 
election law except as to the number of members 
of Parliament. 

XIV. Election Laws — All existing election laws 
apply except as altered by this act or by the Pro- 
vincial Parliaments under this act. 

XV. Money Bills — The Provincial Parliaments 
may not pass money bills, &c., except in pursuance 
of a recommendation from the Lord Lieutenant in 
the session in which they are proposed. 

XVI. Privileges — The privileges of each Par- 
liament and its members are never to exceed those 
of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and are 
to be the same as those until defined by acts of the 
Provincial Parliaments. Peers may be members of 
the House of Commons. 

XVII. Irish M. P.'s at Westminster — Until the 
Parliament of the United Kingdom otherwise de- 
termines there are to be forty-two Irish members in 
the Imperial Parliament. The present members of 
the House of Commons are to vacate their seats on 
the appointed day and writs are to be issued for 
the election of new ones. 

Financial Provisions 

XVIII. Finance — There is to be a Consolidated 
Fund for each of the two areas. The Parliaments 
have power to make laws imposing, charging, levy- 
ing and collecting taxes other than customs duties, 
excise duties on articles manufactured and produced, 
and excess profits duty and the United Kingdom in- 
come tax, But, 



140 THE HOME RULE BILL 

The imposing, charging, levying and collec- 
tion of customs duties and of excise duties on 
articles manufactured and produced, and the 
granting of customs and excise drawbacks and 
allowances, and, except to the extent herein- 
after mentioned, the imposing, charging, levy- 
ing and collection of income tax (including 
super-tax) and excess profits duty, shall be re- 
served matters and the proceeds of those duties 
and taxes shall be paid into the Consolidated 
Fund of the United Kingdom. 

The Joint Exchequer Board is to determine what 
part of the proceeds of these duties are properly 
attributable to Ireland. Each year Ireland is to 
make a contribution toward Imperial liabilities. 
For the first two years this is to be £18,000,000. Of 
this contribution for the first two years Southern 
Ireland will provide 56 per cent, and Northern 
Ireland will provide 44 per cent., after which the 
proportions will be determined by the Joint Ex- 
chequer Board. "Every year a sum equal to the . 
, Irish share of reserved taxes is to be paid out of 
the United Kingdom Consolidated Fund to the Irish 
Exchequers, after deducting the amount of the Irish 
contribution toward Imperial Tiabilities, and while 
any services remain reserved the net co'&t-of these 
will be deducted. 

XIX. Income Tax — The Irish Parliaments are'^ 
to have power to impose an additional income tax 
or super tax, to be called a surtax. The land pur- 
chase annuities are to be collected by the Irish Gov- 
ernments and paid into the appropriate account. 
Provisions are made against double death jduties and 
so forth. 



THE HOME RULE BILL 141 

A clause enacts that after the date of Irish Union 
the question of allowing Ireland control over cus- 
toms and excise may be considered. 

XX. Supreme Court — The Supreme Court of 
Ireland will cease to exist and there will be two 
Supreme Courts, one for Southern Ireland and one 
for Northern Ireland. All matters relating to these 
Supreme Courts are "reserved matters" until the 
date of Irish Union, but here again identical acts 
passed by bo^h Parliaments might secure their amal- 
gamation. Existing Judges and civil servants are 
secured in their office. 

All existing laws, institutions and authorities are 
• to be continued with the necessary modifications 
until altered so far as they can be altered within 
the powers of the Parliaments. 

The existing exemptions and immunities of Dub- 
Jin University, Trinity College and' Queen's Uni- 
versity at Belfast are to continue; £18,000 is to be 
appropriated by the Northern Parliament for 
Queens University and £5,000 by the Southern Par- 
liament for Trinity. Both Parliaments are forbid- 
den to enact laws prejUcficial to Free Masons. The 
final provisions of the bill are as follows: 

The Appointed Day — i. This act shall, ejicept as 
expressly provided, come into operation on the ap- 
pointed day, and the appointed day for the purposes 
of this act shall be the first Tuesday in the eighth 
month after the month in which this act is passed, 
or such other day not more than seven months 
earlier or later, as may be fixed by Order of his 



142 THE HOME RULE BILL 

Majesty in Council either generally or with refer- 
ence to any particular provision of this act, and 
different days may be appointed for different pur- 
poses and different provisions of this act, but the 
Parliaments of Southern and Northern Ireland shall 
be summoned to meet not later than four months 
after the said Tuesday, and the appointed day for 
holding elections for the House of Commons of 
Southern and Northern Ireland shall be fixed ac- 
cordingly : 

Provided that the appointed day as respects the 
transfer of any service may, at the joint request 
of the Governments of Southern Ireland and North- 
ern Ireland be fixed at a date later than seven 
months after the said Tuesday. 

2. Nothing in this act shall affect the administra- 
tion of any service before the day appointed for the 
transfer of that service from the Government of 
the United Kingdom. 

Supremacy of Westminster — Notwithstanding 
the establishment of the Parliaments of Southern 
and Northern Ireland, or the Parliament of Ire- 
land, or anything contained in tlji§ act, the supreme 
authority of the Parliament .or the United Kingdom 
sj^iall remain unaffected and undiminished over all 
persons, matters and things in Ireland and every 
part thereof. 

Repeal of 1914 Act — i. This act may be cited 
as the Government of Ireland act, 1920. 
' 2. The Government of Ireland act, 1914, is hereby 
repealed. 



APPENDIX B 

MR. LLOYD GEORGE'S STATEMENT, 
31 MARCH, 1920 

Premier Lloyd George in his address in support 
of the Irish Home Rule bill said that if the people 
of Ireland were asked what plan they would accept, 
by an emphatic majority they would reply, "We 
want independence, and also a republic." The 
elected representatives of Ireland now, by a definite 
majority, have declared for independence and seces- 
sion. But is there a single party in the House of 
Commons, a single group or fraction of a party, 
that would accept that solution? Having dramatic- 
ally asked this questioihv^nd paused through a brief 
silence that was an answer, Mr. Lloyd George 
continued : 

Therefore, it is no use talking about self-deter- 
mination. Self-determination does not mean that 
every part of a country which has been acting with 
the other parts for hundreds of years shall have the 
right to say, "We want to set up a separate repub- 
lic." That is exactly the very thing that was fought 
for in the Civil War in America, 
143 



144 THE HOME RULE BILL 

If any section in Wales were to get up and say, 

"We want to set up a Welsh Republic." I should 

certainly resist it to the utmost of my power; and 

r Britain, in its own interests, including the interests 

of Wales, would be right to resist it; yet it has as 

defrnite and as clear a nationality as any other 

nationality in this kingdom. The same thing applies 

to Scotland. If Brittany demanded self-determina- 

' tioh, that does not mean that France, which has 

^ been in favour of the principle of self-det-ermination. 

ought to grant a separate republic to Brittany. 

There must be a limitation to the application of 

•'"■an^ ^principle. Otherwise you might carry it to 

every fragment and every area and every locality in 

..every coun^fry throughout the world. When you 

\ lay down a principle of that kind you must lay it 

©own within the limitations which common sense 

. and tradition will permit. That is my answer about 

w,^^ Ilreland. 

I now ask the leader of the Labour Party, is he 
speaking on behalt of his party in favour of apply- 
ing the principle of self-determination to Ireland? 

Mr. Clynes: If an answer is required, the an- 
swer is, "Not self-determination as you have de- 
fined it." 
^ Mr. Lloyd George : "That means that the Labour 
Party'is not prepared to give self-determination to 
Ireland. That is, if Ireland demands a separate 
" Irish Republic, the Labour Party is opposed to it. 
It only misleads Irish electors, in Ireland and this 
- country, into the belief that the Labour Party means 
to concede self-determination. 

Now I come to the suggestion made by Mr. As- 
quith. He has a plan. Can he name any Irish 



THE HOME RULE^ BILL 145 

party or any section of a party in Ireland that 
would say, "We will accept it?" 

What is it? The Act of 1914, with Dominion 
' Home Rule added, so far as I can understand, sub- 
f^ject to serious limitations. It gives the power to 
^ 'erect a \ariff wall against Great Britain, to exclude 
-' British goodS' from Ireland, to give preference to 
f' . America, o^r even to- Germany. That is the proposal, 
but «vith the exclusion of Ulster counties. He says: 
"I wbuld give an Irfsh Parliament to the whole of 
Ireland with county option." He can say -what he 
,will about it, that is partition. It may be the parti- 
tion of four counties instead of six. Nevertheless, 
it is partition. 



Disagreement on Everything 

The speaker sated that the Asquith proposal 
would be rejected with scorn by Sinn Feiners, 
Nationalists and Ulsterites, and continued: 

What is the use of saying, under those circum- 
stances, that no plan is acceptable unless Irish opin- 
ion will accept it? I have pointed out that there is 
no plan acceptable to any British party which is 
acceptable to any party in Ireland at the moment. 

That is one of the fundamental facts. You have 
not a foundation to build on until you accept it. 
It is no use talking about this bill not being ac- 
ceptable to Irish opinion. Mr. Asquith's plan is 
not acceptable. Mr. Clynes would have a conven- 
tion in Ireland and a constituent assembly, I take 
it, with legislative powers. There has been a con- 



146 THE HOME RULE BILL 

vention in Ireland and not even Nationalist opinion 
was agreed there. There is a document signed by 
twenty-two Nationalists and another signed by 
twenty-six Nationalists, disagreeing. 

In speaking of the powers given to the Parlia- 
ment by the act, Mr. Lloyd George said: 

These are the powers given by the act, and it is 
a great mistake, it is unfair, it is misleading, it can 
do no good to represent to the people of this coun- 
try, and especially to the people of Ireland that 
these are not powers of a gigantic kind which are "^ 
conferred on these Parliaments by these proposals. 

The position is of a character which makes it 
absolutely essential that before anything can be 
done for the whole of Ireland there should be 
agreement between North and Seuth. We have de- 
liberately framed it in such a way that no powers 
beyond those which we have specified should be 
given over the whole of Ireland, except with the 
consent, not merely of the North, but of the South 
as well. The South can veto the North and the - 
North can veto the South, unless there is unity 
between them. 

Much will depend, when you try to achieve unity, ' 
• on the attitude of the Sinn Fein population of the 
South. They can bring unity nearer by years if 
they like to make an effort to work this; but if they .^ 
) v/ork for the purpose of inflicting harm on Ulster 
or on the population of this country they will post- 
V pone union indefinitely. 

It is for that reason I think it is a misfortune 
that the population of Ireland has been misled as 



THE HOME RULE BILL 147 

to what the bill really contains, because in that 
temper they cannot counter it. I know there are 
many men in Ireland who sincerely desire to see 
this bill through; men who are just as good Nation- 
alists as those sitting on that bench. 

This scheme holds the field because it recog- 
nizes the facts. It recognizes that you cannot sat- 
isfy Irish opinion in its present state of exaltation 
without destroying the essential unity of the United 
Kingdom. I regret it. 

The second point is that the demand in Ireland 
for the moment is a demand for independence, for 



'^'-^ secession and not self-government. 



i Reminder to America 

' I want to say this to our American friends. Mr. 
De Valera is putting forward the same claim, in 
. exactly the same language, as Mr. Jefferson Davis ; 
, and the ancestors of some of the men who voted 
for that motion in the Senate the other day fought 
to the death against conceding to the Southern 
States of the United States of America that very 
demand they were supporting in Ireland. 

The acceptance of that demand was never con- 
ceded. It is a demand which, if it is persisted in, 
will lead to exactly the same measures of repression 
• , as in the Southern States of America. We claim 
'^ nothing more than the United States claimed over 
these; we will stand no less. 

The second point I want to put is this : There are 
certain powers which might be conferred on Ire- 
land when she settles down and accepts union and 
works union, which, if given to her in her present 



^1 



148 THE HOME RULE BILL 

mood, would only be used for the hurt of the 
United Kingdom and her own. It would be placing 
dangerous weapons in the hands of an infuriated 
people. 

Take customs. If you handed them over they 
would be used inevitably for the purpose of making 
war on Great Britain. Those are powers we can- 
not see our way to confer until Ireland settles down, 
until Ireland establishes union, until Ireland accepts 
in good faith partnership with the United Kingdom 
just like any other nationality in this land. 

The other fact is that referred to by Sir Edward 
Carson, with regard to Ulster. Ulster has been 
treated -as if it were a minority to be prote(cted. 
l^ter is not a minority to be safeguarded. Ulster is 
an entity to be de: It with. It is a different problem. 
tt is a separate and different tort of Ireland. 

It is exactly the problem m sLesia which we were 
\ j^ealing with in tlie PcCtv^e gtonference. We might 
have treated Silesia as a whole, which it always 
had been; but we felt that that would be unfair. If 
the.,'majority had been in favour of the Germans you 
would put solid blocks of Poles inside Germany; if 
the majority had been in favour of the Poles you 
would have put solid blocks of Germans inside 
Poland. , 

Wrong Idea of Government 

There is a good deal in Irish government that one 
regrets, but the real fact is this — that for not lOO 
years b«ft)r 700 years the majority of the people 
have been dissociated from responsibility in their 
own Government — and the hand that extended good 






THE HOME RULE BILL 149 

government to them was the same hand that ex- 
tended bad government. 

It is not that Irishmen sympathize with murder. 
That is not the point. They say that is the busi- 
ness of the Government, and the Government is 
not theirs. The Government belongs to somebody 
else. 

My right honourable friend said the teachers were 

very badly paid in Ireland and he talked as if 

that was purely a matter with Great Britain. It is 

not. We rate ourselves heavily. We make our own 

efforts to pay contributions to our teachers. In Ire- 

and they say that is the business of the Government. 

he whole system of government in Ireland js 

vitiated by the fact that you sever the people from''~ 

L S. ' law and government. That has got to be put^right. 

There is no union. There is union between Scot- 

^ land, England and W-^les. There is union that 

,- .. bears the test of deatli. Ther^ is no union with 

y J Ireland. Her grappling hook was not unfoh. I am 

^ sanguine enoHgh to believe that we shall get it 

through this bill. "*v- 

I do not say you will get it in a year, or two, or 
three years. You cannot remove misconceptions, 
misunderstandings, bitterness of centuries. iii a year 
or two. Ireland is a country of long memories. In 
fact the one trouble of Ireland is that it has struck 
)its roots rather too deep into the past and has 'got 
into poor soil. 

Ireland needs root-pruning; but I believe that 
with patience and with that sort of good humour 
^'^ which Britons under certain conditions display, and 
not taking too much notice of mere histrionic dis- 
plays of disaffection, and dealing firmly with alt 



\^ 



150 THE HOME RULE BILL 

ifcal cases of treason and lawlessness, you will 
gradually arrive at the union of North and South — 
a union of Protestant and Catholic, a real union of 
good partners in a great concern, of which all alike 
equally will be proud. 



y 



APPENDIX C 

EX-PREMIER ASQUITH'S CRITICISMS— 
HIS SUBSTITUTE PROPOSAL 

Herbert H. Asquith, the former Premier and 
present leader of the Opposition, speaking against 
the Home Rule bill in the House of Commons on 
March 31, contended that no new scheme of gov- 
ernment should be imposed upon Ulster. He con- 
tinued: 

Ireland is a country so circumstanced that this 
bill proposes to create two Legislatures, two or per- 
haps three executiv'^es, two judicatures, two ex- 
chequers, two consolidated funds, and potentially, at 
any rate, two systems of taxation. On the face of 
it that is a costly and cumbrous duplication and mul- 
tiplication of institutions and offices. From the 
mere point of view of administrative efficiency and 
economy, particularly in times like these, there is 
nothing whatever to be said for such a proposal. 
It can only be justified as a concession, taking it 
by considerations of high policy, to a clamorous 
national demand. Is there such a demand? One 
thing is certain about this bill, which cannot be 
disputed by anybody — no section of Irish opinion 
151 



152 THE HOME RULE BILL 

asks for it, and no Irish sentiment — at present so 
sore and mutinous — will be soothed or appeased by 
it. No one in Ireland wants two Parliaments. No 
one in Ireland wants to see the judicial bench cut 
in half. No one in Ireland desires the establish- 
ment in the administrative sphere of two Dublin 
Castles, however, reformed, expurgated and regen- 
erated, in place of one. Every previous Home Rule 
bill has received the support if not of four-fifths 
at least of three-cjuarters of the elected representa- 
tives of Ireland in this House. It is doubtful when 
we come to a division on the second reading if one 
single Irish member of any section will support it. 
This is the first experiment in the domestic or inter- 
imperial sphere of the great principle of self-deter- 
mination. [Cheers and laughter.] That is the bill 
on its merits — a large, cumbrous, costly, unworkable 
scheme, which is not demanded or supported by any 
section of opinion in the country to which it is to 
be applied. 

To call this a Home Rule bill, said Mr. Asquith, 
was a misnomer. He continued: 

Home Rule has always meant to us Home Rulers 
the establishment in Ireland of a single Legislature 
with an Executive responsible to and dependent 
upon it. We have agreed from the first that yoa 
cannot carry out that which is the dominant pur- 
pose, the governing principle, the aim and goal of 
our policy, without providing, on the one hand, ade- 
quate safeguards for the maintenance of imperial 
supremacy, and, on the other hand, reasonable pro- 
tection for the rights and possible dangers of Irish 



THE HOME RULE BILL 153 

minorities. But this present bill wholly discards the 
principle of all previous Home Rule bills. It pro- 
poses to create two co-ordinate and mutually inde- 
pendent Legislatures and Executives. 

He asserted that the proposed Irish Council was 
"a fleshless and bloodless skeleton" without power, 
except when given power by identic acts of the two 
Parliaments. He asserted that there was no hope 
of the two Parliaments ever uniting. He quoted 
from an address of a leading Ulster member, Cap- 
tain Craig of Antrim: 

There has been a great deal said in this debate 
about the time when there is to be union between us. 
It has been said that this bill lends itself to the 
union of Ulster and the rest of Ireland. It would 
not be fair to the House if I lent the slightest hope 
of that union arising within the lifetime of any 
man in this House. I do not believe it for a 
moment. 

Mr. Asquith added: 

Then he goes on to explain this is going to be 
frustrated by the machinery provided by the bill 
itself: "If we had," he says, "the nine counties," 
that is to say, a Northern Parliament representing 
the whole province of Ulster, the nine counties Par- 
liament, "with sixty-four members, the Unionist 
majority would be about three or four. The three 
excluded counties contain some 70,000 Unionists 
and 261,000 Sinn Feiners and Nationalists, and the 
addition of that large block of Sinn Feiners and 



154 THE HOME RULE BILL 

Nationalists would reduce our majority to siach a 
level that no sane man would undertake to carry 
on a Parliament with it." 

So you have got to reduce Ulster for this pur- 
pose from nine counties to six. Here you are 
creating a Northern Parliament with co-ordinating 
powers with a Southern Parliament, and in the con- 
stitution of the Northern Parliament you except 
three of the nine Ulster counties, with the result 
which the honourable and gallant member gloats 
over — that they will always have a majority and be 
able to defeat, permanently, every move for the at- 
tainment of a single Parliament for Ireland. 

He advocated giving the Irish Legislature the 
power of imposing customs, excise and income tax. 
He criticised the bill because it gave no protection 
to the religious minorities in either Parliament, and 
favoured county option for the Province of Ulster. 
He also advocated as a substitute a suggestion made 
by Sir Horace Plunkett — the summoning of a Con- 
stituent Assembly with instructions to set up an 
Irish Legislative Assembly and leave to the Con- 
stituent Assembly the responsibility for working out 
the scheme. 



APPENDIX D 

MR. BONAR LAW'S REPLY TO ASQUITH 

Andrew Bonar Law, spokesman for the Govern- 
ment, in replying to Mr. Asquith, twitted him with 
his failure to accomplish anything when he was 
Premier. Accusing him of a short memory, since 
the Asquith Government in 1916 had tried to carry 
out proposals almost identical with those of the 
Lloyd George Government, Bonar Law went on to 
say that the following were the only possible alterna- 
tives in dealing with the situation: 

First, repeal the Home Rule Act. 

Second, Dominion Home Rule. 

Third, to give self-determination to the represen- 
tatives of the Irish people; that is, to create an Irish 
Republic. 

Fourth, to give to Ireland the largest measure of 
home rule compatible with national security and 
pledges given. That is the object of the bill. 

It is obvious [he continued] that repeal is not pos- 
sible to the present Government. I believe in the 
value to the nation of the continuance of the Coali- 
tion Government. If the policy of repeal were the 
155 



V 



,/ 



iS6 THE HOME RULE BILL 

right policy I should say at once the Coalition should 
come to an end. 

Another alternative is Dominion Home Hule. 
J^r. Asquith used that phrase, but did he mean it? 
The v^ty words he lased showed that he did not 
mean it. What is the essence of Dominion Home 
Rule? The essence is that the Dominions have con- 
trol of their whole destinies, of their fighting forces, 
and of the amount that they contribute to the g^- 
eral support and security of the Empire. Does th^e 
right honourable gentleman propose to give these 
things to Ireland? Not at all; he was going to re- 
serve the armed forces and state the contribution^ 
which should be made. There is not a man in the 
House, least of all the right honourable gentleman, 
who would not admit that the connection of 0d- 
minions and the Empire depends upon the Domin- 
ions. H Australia, Canada, or Mew Zealand chose 
to say, "We will not remain part of the British Em- 
pire," we would not force them. Dominion Home 
Rule means the right to decide their own destinies. 

The right honourable gentleman says that this^is 
dc"::anded by the legal representatives of the Irish 
people. They are still as much legal representatives 
when they are Sinn Feiners, and to say he is pre- 
pared to give Dominion Home Rule means nothing 
less than that he is prepared to give an Irish Repub- 
lic. My right honourable friend shakes his head, but 
that is no answer. 

Danger in Separation 

The speaker challenged the labour members to de- 
clare they favoured an Irish Republic. There was 



THE HOME RULE BILL 157 

no answer to his challenge. He then continued as 
follows : 

It is one of the most childish mistakes to assume 
that because Ireland is separated from us by a sheet 

^ of water she is in any degree less essential to the 
national security than if she were part of this island. 
AH the experience of the growth of nationalities 
, shows that water connections have as much to do 
with the grouping of peoples as land connections. 
•-That is the cause of the difficulty in settling the 
.^^driatic question to-day. Though this water is be- 
tween us it is no less dangerous to have Ireland out 
-^of the orbit of our national defence. The policy 

^ of^ separation has never been adopted under such 
circumstances by any nation in the history of the 
world except after defeat and under compulsion. 
It was against such a policy that a most bloody war 
was waged in the United States. Let us see clearly 
where we are going. ' Those who talk loosely of 
self-determination s'uould see exactly where it leads, 
and ask themselves whether they are prepared to 

^ follow that road to the end. 

^ The speaker argued that the proposed bill was 
the nearest to self-government that national security 
would permit. He said that the Ulster Parliament 
was made up of the six counties instead of the nine, 
in order to make ultimate union possible. He then 
added : 

We wish to keep on the best terms with America. 
We shall do what is right, and trust to that win- 



V 



IS8 THE HOME RULE BILL 

ning respect. But it is not merely America, it is 
our self-governing dominions. I have hardly met 
an Australian or Canadian who has not said, "Why 
don't you give them home rule?" To all of these 
we say that by this bill England ceases to interfere, 
and that Ireland has the power to govern in her 
own hands the moment Irishmen can agree among 
themselves. 

Why have we taken the six counties? In the 
first place in the election manifesto of my right 
honourable friend and myself we stated that we in- 
tended to deal with the matter on the basis of the 
six counties. In 191 6 there was a real attempt to 
get a settlement for the first time on the basis of 
recognizing facts as they were. The leaders of the 
Ulster Party and the leaders of the Nationalist 
Party met. They decided to try to carry the six 
counties. If at the time when there was a real 
desire for settlement both sections thought that a 
fair settlement, I say that this House has a right 
to regard it now as a fair settlement. My right 
honourable friend quoted Captain Craig as saying 
that in his belief there would be no union in the 
lifetime of any of us. How can any one forecast 
the future? If we had kept the whole of Ulster 
what would have been the position? We would 
have been told by every Nationalist on the opposite 
.benches that the three Ulster counties were identical 
, in sympathy with the rest of Ireland, and that it 
^ was monstrous to exclude them from Southern 
■ Ireland. * * * 

If the whole of Ulster had been in the Parliament 
the other side would have tried to keep as the 
whole issue this arrangement with the six counties. 



THE HOME RULE BILL 159 

By this arrangement the six counties will fall into 

normal lines. If you free these six counties you 

Will free them from this old quarrel and they will 

take new directions. I have seen something of 

I those sir counties and I think they are the most 

■^ democratic population in these islands. 

^ My right honourable friend said the Central Council 

f is purely humbug. It is exactly the amount of 

humbug that the honourable member and his friends 

choose to make it. It gives machinery for the 

closest co-operation between the two Parliaments if 

they agree. If they do not agree what is the sense 

of talking about giving to Ireland control of their 

own affairs? * * * 



How Bill Would Work 

The moment this bill becomes law these tv/o 
ParliaiTients are constituted. I think the House has 
a right to know what will happen if the contingency 
suggested by Mr. O'Connor really happens, and if 
the Sinn Feiners were in a majority and refused 
to work our Parliament. What would happen would 
be that instantly we should revert to the present 
position and it must be made perfectly plain that 
until the Parliament is properly constituted and has 
taken the oath the act cannot come into operation. 

Mr. Devlin — Does that apply to Ulster? 

Mr. Bonar Law — Yes. 

Mr. Devlin — If the rest of Ireland refuses to 
recognize this Parliament, would the Parliament be 
put into operation in Ulster? 

Mr. Bonar Law — Most certainly, and may I point 
out to the House that, in my view, that gives good 






Bfl, 



i6o THE HOME RULE BILL 

ground for hoping that this will ultimately succeed? 
You set up these Parliaments; the Ulster Parlia- 
ment, I presume, will at once work, the rest of 
Ireland will see that it is working satisfactorily. 
There will be before their eyes the evidence that 
they can have the same self-government the mo- 
ment they like. Even suppose that for the first 
Parliament the Sinn Feiners refuse to have any- 
thing to do with it, or refuse to take the oath of 
allegiance, we drop back to where we are. If the 
whole south of Ireland is composed of people who 
will have nothing but a republic, then no settlement 
is possible. If, on the other hand, there is, as we 
are constantly told, a large element among the 
Nationalist population who are sane, and who look 
at things with a real desire to do the best for 
Ireland, I do not believe that when they see these 
powers working in the rest of Ireland before them 
they will refuse to accept the situation and take 
advantage of it. 



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